The road

HV

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME
OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT
EUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY

HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE

Date Due

Ai-tK^'- g Tg SQH -Ir

-zr^

y^-fiicfr^^

"^

^

m m 1 i •■fe^«i ^ I "^'

CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 1924 095 660 472

h Cornell University
W Library

The original of this bool< is in
the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924095660472

THE ROAD

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK - BOSTON • CHICAGO
ATLANTA ■ SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

LONDON - BOMBAY ■ CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

The tall negro and I had the place of honor. (See page 82. J

THE ROAD

BY

JACK LONDON

AUTHOR OF "THE CALL OF THE WILD,"
" WHITE FANG," ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

Neto gorfe

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1907

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1907,
By international MAGAZINE COMPANY.

Copyright, 1907,
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published NoYember, 1907.

n /ii>^^6/

WotlDoaB ^ase

J. 8. Oushlng Co — Berwick & Smith Co.

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

" Speakin' in general, I 'ave tried 'em all,
The 'appy roads that take you o'er the world.
Speakin' in general, I 'ave found them good
For such as cannot use one bed too long,
But must get 'ence, the same as I 'ave done,
An' go observin' matters till they die."

— Sestina of the Tramp-Royal.

Co
JOSIAH FLYNT

THE REAL THING, SLOWED IN THE GLASS

CONTENTS

PAGE

Confession i

Holding her Down 24

Pictures 53

" Pinched " 74

The Pen 98

Hoboes that pass in the Night 122

Road-kids and Gay -cats 152

Two Thousand Stiffs 175

Bulls 196

ILLUSTRATIONS

" The tall negro and I had the place of honor " . . Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

" The doors were slammed in my face "..... 3

" I stood in the open door " 4

" A bone to the dog is not charity " 7

" I knocked softly at the kitchen door "..... 10

" She looked at me closely when she got me into the light ". . 17
" Just as I was leaving, with my arms full of lunch " . . .21

On the Rods .... ..... 24

" It was the largest hand-out I ever saw " 26

" Evidently the guests hadn't liked cake either " . . . .28

A " Set-down " 30

" I have been hit by lanterns two or three times " ... 32
" I make a spring with my legs and ' muscle ' myself up with my

arms '........... 35

" I look down and see them "....... 37

" I rise to my feet and walk down the train half a dozen cars " 39
" I crawl on hands and knees across the rail on the opposite side

and gain my feet" ........ 42

"My fingers grip the handhold, and my feet land on the steps

with sharp violence " 48

" I was awakened by the sliding open of the door " . . -So
" A ' set-down ' with two maiden ladies, with them beside me at

the table" 55

" I gathered in a newspaper from the doorway of some late-riser " 56
" I came to a lot of fellows who were in swimming off one of the

piers " . . . . 58

xu

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING

" Even a ' set-down ' could not have lured me away

" I started down the road "

" We were led into the office of the Penitentiary "
" Each story a row of cells "...
" We filed into the barber shop " .
Our Bunks ......

The Prison-yard . ....

" Just inside the door were piled trays of bread ''
" All the guard did was to unlock the door "
" I stooped to pick up my bundle "
" A few minutes later I was on board a freight "

"Shacks"

" We entered them through hatchways in the top of the car "

" He pointed out of doors " .

" Grabbed me by the heels and dragged me out "

" I offered to ' shove ' coal to the end of his run "

"It was the sheriff"

" I found the car — with the leeward door open for ventilation "

" A puff of wind caught us, and we shot away "

"There was I bare-headed in the street"

" Drunken men are the especial prey of the road-kids "

" I was carrying two buckets " . . . .

" I took my pick ''......

" One afternoon I arrived at the park "

" I saw myself across in Blackwell's Island "

"By a bonfire"

" I went down to the depot and caught the first blind out

74
76

85
87
90

94

99
100

106
112
120
133
135
136

138
140
142
144
156
16s
172
186

193
206
208
210
218

THE ROAD

THE ROAD

CONFESSION

There is a woman in the state of Nevada to whom
I once hed continuously, consistently, and shame-
lessly, for the matter of a couple of hours. I don't
want to apologize to her. Far be it from me. But,
I do want to explain. Unfortunately, I do not know
her name, much less her present address. If her
eyes should chance upon these lines, I hope she will
write to me.

It was in Reno, Nevada, in the summer of 1892.
Also, it was fair-time, and the town was filled with
petty crooks and tin-horns, to say nothing of a vast
and hungry horde of hoboes. It was the hungry
hoboes that made the town a "hungry" town. They
"battered" the back doors of the homes of the citi-
zens until the back doors became unresponsive.

A hard town for "scoffings," was what the hoboes
called it at that time. I know that I missed many
a meal, in spite of the fact that I could "throw my
feet" with the next one when it came to "slamming

2 THE ROAD

a gate" for a "poke-out" or a "set-down," or hitting
for a "light piece" on the street. Why, I was so
hard put in that town, one day, that I gave the por-
ter the shp and invaded the private car of some itin-
erant milHonnaire. The train started as I made the
platform, and I headed for the aforesaid millionnaire
with the porter one jump behind and reaching for me.
It was a dead heat, for I reached the millionnaire at
the same instant that the porter reached me. I had
no time for formalities. "Gimme a quarter to eat
on," I blurted out. And as I live, that millionnaire
dipped into his pocket and gave me . . . just . . .
precisely ... a quarter. It is my conviction that he
was so flabbergasted that he obeyed automatically,
and it has been a matter of keen regret ever since,
on my part, that I didn't ask him for a dollar. I
know that I'd have got it. I swung off the platform
of that private car with the porter manoeuvring to
kick me in the face. He missed me. One is at a
terrible disadvantage when trying to swing off the
lowest step of a car and not break his neck on the
right of way, with, at the same time, an irate Ethio-
pian on the platform above trying to land him in
the face with a number eleven. But I got the quar-
ter ! I got it !

The doors were slammed in my face.

CONFESSION 3

But to return to the woman to whom I so shame-
lessly lied. It was in the evening of my last day in
Reno. I had been out to the race-track watching the
ponies run, and had missed my dinner {i.e. the mid-
day meal). I was hungry, and, furthermore, a com-
mittee of public safety had just been organized to
rid the town of just such hungry mortals as I.
Already a lot of my brother hoboes had been gathered
in by John Law, and I could hear the sunny valleys
of California calling to me over the cold crests of the
Sierras. Two acts remained for me to perform be-
fore I shook the dust of Reno from my feet. One
was to catch the blind baggage on the westbound
overland that night. The other was first to get some-
thing to eat. Even youth will hesitate at an all-night
ride, on an empty stomach, outside a train that is
tearing the atmosphere through the snow-sheds, tun-
nels, and eternal snows of heaven-aspiring mountains.

But that something to eat was a hard proposition.
I was "turned down" at a dozen houses. Sometimes
I received insulting remarks and was informed of
the barred domicile that should be mine if I had
my just deserts. The worst of it was that such as-
sertions were only too true. That was why I was
pulling west that night. John Law was abroad in

4 THE ROAD

the town, seeking eagerly for the hungry and homeless,
for by such was his barred domicile tenanted.

At other houses the doors were slammed in my
face, cutting short my politely and humbly couched
request for something to eat. At one house they did
not open the door. I stood on the porch and knocked,
and they looked out at me through the window. They
even held one sturdy little boy aloft so that he could
see over the shoulders of his elders the tramp who
wasn't going to get anything to eat at their house.

It began to look as if I should be compelled to go
to the very poor for my food. The very poor con-
stitute the last sure recourse of the hungry tramp.
The very poor can always be depended upon. They
never turn away the hungry. Time and again, all
over the United States, have I been refused food by
the big house on the hill ; and always have I received
food from the little shack down by the creek or marsh,
with its broken windows stuffed with rags and its
tired-faced mother broken with labor. Oh, you charity-
mongers! Go to the poor and learn, for the poor
alone are the charitable. They neither give nor
withhold from their excess. They have no excess.
They give, and they withhold never, from what they
need for themselves, and very often from what they

I stood in the open door.

CONFESSION c

cruelly need for themselves. A bone to the dog is
not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the
dog when you are just as hungry as the dog.

There was one house in particular where I was
turned down that evening. The porch windows
opened on the dining room, and through them I saw
a man eating pie — a big meat-pie. I stood in the
open door, and while he talked with me, he went on
eating. He was prosperous, and out of his prosperity
had been bred resentment against his less fortunate
brothers.

He cut short my request for something to eat, snap-
ping out, "I don't believe you want to work."

Now this was irrelevant. I hadn't said anything
about work. The topic of conversation I had intro-
duced was "food." In fact, I didn't want to work.
I wanted to take the westbound overland that night.
"You wouldn't work if you had a chance," he
bullied.

I glanced at his meek-faced wife, and knew that
but for the presence of this Cerberus I'd have a whack
at that meat-pie myself. But Cerberus sopped him-
self in the pie, and I saw that I must placate him if
I were to get a share of it. So I sighed to myself and
accepted his work-morality.

6 THE ROAD

"Of course I want work," I bluffed.

"Don't believe it," he snorted.

"Try me," I answered, warming to the bluff.

"All right," he said. "Come to the corner of blank
and blank streets" — (I have forgotten the address)
• — "to-morrow morning. You know where that
burned building is, and I'll put you to work tossing
bricks."

"All right, sir; I'll be there."

He grunted and went on eating. I waited. After
a couple of minutes he looked up with an I-thought-
you-were-gone expression on his face, and demanded : —

"Well?"

"I . . . I am waiting for something to eat," I said
gently.

"I knew you wouldn't work!" he roared.

He was right, of course; but his conclusion must
have been reached by mind-reading, for his logic
wouldn't bear it out. But the beggar at the door
must be humble, so I accepted his logic as I had ac-
cepted his morality.

"You see, I am now hungry," I said still gently.
"To-morrow morning I shall be hungrier. Think
how hungry I shall be when I have tossed bricks all
day without anything to eat. Now if you will give

60

O

-a

c
o

43

CONFESSION 7

me something to eat, I'll be in great shape for those
bricks."

He gravely considered my plea, at the same time
going on eating, while his wife nearly trembled into
propitiatory speech, but refrained.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," he said between mouth-
fuls. "You come to work to-morrow, and in the
middle of the day I'll advance you enough for your
dinner. That will show whether you are in earnest
or not."

"In the meantime — " I began; but he inter-
rupted.

"If I gave you something to eat now, I'd never see
you again. Oh, I know your kind. Look at me.
I owe no man. I have never descended so low as to
ask any one for food. I have always earned my food.
The trouble with you is that you are idle and dis-
solute. I can see it in your face. I have worked and
been honest. I have made myself what I am. And
you can do the same, if you work and are honest."

"Like you?" I queried.

Alas, no ray of humor had ever penetrated the sombre
work-sodden soul of that man.

"Yes, like me," he answered.

"All of us?" I queried.

8 THE ROAD

"Yes, all of you," he answered, conviction vibrat-
ing in his voice.

"But if we all became like you," I said, "allow me
to point out that there'd be nobody to. toss bricks for
you."

I swear there was a flicker of a smile in his wife's
eye. As for him, he was aghast — but whether at
the awful possibility of a reformed humanity that
would not enable him to get anybody to toss bricks
for him, or at my impudence, I shall never know.

"I'll not waste words on you," he roared. "Get
out of here, you ungrateful whelp!"

I scraped my feet to advertise my intention of going,
and queried : —

"And I don't get anything to eat?"

He arose suddenly to his feet. He was a large man.
I was a stranger in a strange land, and John Law was
looking for me. I went away hurriedly. "But why
ungrateful?" I asked myself as I slammed his gate.
"What in the dickens did he give me to be ungrateful
about?" I looked back. I could still see him through
the window. He had returned to his pie.

By this time I had lost heart. I passed many
houses by without venturing up to them. All houses
looked alike, and none looked "good." After walk-

CONFESSION 9

ing half a dozen blocks I shook off my despondency
and gathered my "nerve." This begging for food
was all a game, and if I didn't hke the cards, I could
always call for a new deal. I made up my mind to
tackle the next house. I approached it in the deepen-
ing twilight, going around to the kitchen door.

I knocked softly, and when I saw the kind face of
the middle-aged woman who answered, as by in-
spiration came to me the "story" I was to teh. For
know that upon his ability to tell a good story depends
the success of the beggar. First of all, and on the
instant, the beggar must "size up" his victim. After
that, he must tell a story that will appeal to the peculiar
personality and temperament of that particular victim.
And right here arises the great difficulty : in the instant
that he is sizing up the victim he must begin his story.
Not a minute is allowed for preparation. As in a
lightning flash he must divine the nature of the victim
and conceive a tale that will hit home. The success-
ful hobo must be an artist. He must create spon-
taneously and instantaneously — and not upon a
theme selected from the plenitude of his own im-
agination, but upon the theme he reads in the face
of the person who opens the door, be it man, woman,
or child, sweet or crabbed, generous or miserly, good-

10 THE ROAD

natured or cantankerous, Jew or Gentile, black or
white, race-prejudiced or brotherly, provincial or
universal, or whatever else it may be. I have often
thought that to this training of my tramp days is due
much of my success as a story-writer. In order to
get the food whereby I lived, I was compelled to tell
tales that rang true. At the back door, out of in-
exorable necessity, is developed the convincingness
and sincerity laid down by all authorities on the art
of the short-story. Also, I quite believe it was my
tramp-apprenticeship that made a realist out of me.
Realism constitutes the only goods one can exchange
at the kitchen door for grub.

After all, art is only consummate artfulness, and
artfulness saves many a "story." I remember lying
in a police station at Winnipeg, Manitoba. I was
bound west over the Canadian Pacific. Of course,
the police wanted my story, and I gave it to them —
on the spur of the moment. They were landlubbers,
in the heart of the continent, and what better story
for them than a sea story? They could never trip
me up on that. And so I told a tearful tale of my
life on the hell-ship Glenmore. (I had once seen the
Glenmore lying at anchor in San Francisco Bay.)
I was an English apprentice, I said. And they

I knocked softly at the kitchen door.

CONFESSION 1 1

said that I didn't talk like an English boy. It was
up to me to create on the instant. I had been born
and reared in the United States. On the death of my
parents, I had been sent to England to my grand-
parents. It was they who had apprenticed me on the
Glenmore. I hope the captain of the Glenmore will
forgive me, for I gave him a character that night in
the Winnipeg police station. Such cruelty! Such
brutality! Such diabolical ingenuity of torture! It
explained why I had deserted the Glenmore at Montreal.
But why was I in the middle of Canada going west,
when my grandparents lived in England.? Promptly
I created a married sister who lived in California.
She would take care of me. I developed at length
her loving nature. But they were not done with me,
those hard-hearted policemen. I had joined the
Glenmore in England; in the two years that had
elapsed before my desertion at Montreal, what had the
Glenmore done and where had she been ? And thereat
I took those landlubbers around the world with me.
Buffeted by pounding seas and stung with flying spray,
they fought a typhoon with me off the coast of Japan.
They loaded and unloaded cargo with me in all the
ports of the Seven Seas. I took them to India, and
Rangoon, and China, and had them hammer ice with

12 THE ROAD

me around the Horn and at last come to moorings at

Montreal.

And then they said to wait a moment, and one police-
man went forth into the night while I warmed myself
at the stove, all the while racking my brains^ for the
trap they were going to spring on me.

I groaned to myself when I saw him come in the
door at the heels of the policeman. No gypsy prank
had thrust those tiny hoops of gold through the ears;
no prairie winds had beaten that skin into wrinkled
leather; nor had snow-drift and mountain-slope put
in his walk that reminiscent roll. And in those eyes,
when they looked at me, I saw the unmistakable sun-
wash of the sea. Here was a theme, alas ! with half
a dozen policemen to watch me read — I who had
never sailed the China seas, nor been around the
Horn, nor looked with my eyes upon India and Rangoon.
I was desperate. Disaster stalked before me in-
carnate in the form of that gold-ear-ringed, weather-
beaten son of the sea. Who was he? What was he?
I must solve him ere he solved me. I must take a new
orientation, or else those wicked policemen would
orientate me to a cell, a police court, and more cells.
If he questioned me' first, before I knew how much
he knew, I was lost.

CONFESSION 13

But did I betray my desperate plight to those lynx-
eyed guardians of the public welfare of Winnipeg?
Not I. I met that aged sailorman glad-eyed and
beaming, with all the simulated relief at deliverance
that a drowning man would display on finding a life-
preserver in his last despairing clutch. Here was
a man who understood and who would verify my
true story to the faces of those sleuth-hounds who did
not understand, or, at least, such was what I en-
deavored to play-act. I seized upon him; I volleyed
him with questions about himself. Before my judges
I would prove the character of my savior before he
saved me.

He was a kindly sailorman — an "easy mark."
The policemen grew impatient while I questioned
him. At last one of them told me to shut up. I shut
up ; but while I remained shut up, I was busy creating,
busy sketching the scenario of the next act. I had
learned enough to go on with. He was a Frenchman.
He had sailed always on French merchant vessels, with
the one exception of a voyage on a "lime-juicer."
And last of all — blessed fact ! — he had not been on
the sea for twenty years.
The policeman urged him on to examine me.
"You called in at Rangoon?" he queried.

14 THE ROAD

I nodded. "We put our third mate ashore there.
Fever."

If he had asked me what kind of fever, I should have
answered, "Enteric," though for the hfe of me I didn't
know what enteric was. But he didn't ask me. In-
stead, his next question was : —

"And how is Rangoon?"

"All right. It rained a whole lot when we were
there."

"Did you get shore-leave?"

" Sure," I answered. "Three of us apprentices went
ashore together."

"Do you remember the temple?"

"Which temple?" I parried.

"The big one, at the top of the stairway."

If I remembered that temple, I knew I'd have to de-
scribe it. The gulf yawned for me.

I shook my head.

"You can see it from all over the harbor," he in-
formed me. "You don't need shore-leave to see that
temple."

I never loathed a temple so in my life. But I fixed
that particular temple at Rangoon.

"You can't see it from the harbor," I contradicted.
"You can't see it from the town. You can't see it

CONFESSION 15

from the top of the Stairway. Because — " I paused
for the effect. "Because there isn't any temple there."

"But I saw it with my own eyes !" he cried.

"That was in — ?" I queried.

"Seventy-one."

"It was destroyed in the great earthquake of 1887,"
I explained. "It was very old."

There was a pause. He was busy reconstructing
in his old eyes the youthful vision of that fair temple
by the sea.

"The stairway is still there," I aided him. "You
can see it from all over the harbor. And you remem-
ber that little island on the right-hand side coming
into the harbor?" I guess there must have been one
there (I was prepared to shift it over to the left-hand
side), for he nodded. " Gone," I said. " Seven fathoms
of water there now."

I had gained a moment for breath. While he pon-
dered on time's changes, I prepared the finishing touches
of my story.

"You remember the custom-house at Bombay?"

He remembered it.

"Burned to the ground," I announced.

"Do you remember Jim Wan?" he came back at

me.

1 6 THE ROAD

"Dead," I said; but who the devil Jim Wan was I
hadn't the sHghtest idea.

I was on thin ice again.

"Do you remember Billy Harper, at Shanghai?" I
queried back at him quickly.

That aged sailorman worked hard to recollect, but
the Billy Harper of my imagination was beyond his
faded memory.

"Of course you remember Billy Harper," I insisted.
"Everybody knows him. He's been there forty years.
Well, he's still there, that's all."

And then the miracle happened. The sailorman
remembered Billy Harper. Perhaps there was a Billy
Harper, and perhaps he had been in Shanghai for forty
years and was still there; but it was news to me.

For fully half an hour longer, the sailorman and I
talked on in similar fashion. In the end he told the
policemen that I was what I represented myself to be,
and after a night's lodging and a breakfast I was re-
leased to wander on westward to my married sister
in San Francisco.

But to return to the woman in Reno who opened her
door to me in the deepening twilight. At the first
glimpse of her kindly face I took my cue. I became
a sweet, innocent, unfortunate lad. I couldn't speak.

She looked at me closely when she got me into the light.

CONFESSION 17

I opened my mouth and closed it again. Never in
my life before had I asked any one for food. My
embarrassment was painful, extreme. I was ashamed.
I, who looked upon begging as a delightful whimsicality,
thumbed myself over into a true son of Mrs. Grundy,
burdened with all her bourgeois morality. Only the
harsh pangs of the belly-need could compel me to do
so degraded and ignoble a thing as beg for food. And
into my face I strove to throw all the wan wistfulness
of famished and ingenuous youth unused to mendi-
cancy.

"You are hungry, my poor boy," she said.

I had made her speak first.

I nodded my head and gulped.

"It is the first time I have ever . . . asked," I
faltered.

"Come right in." The door swung open. "We
have already finished eating, but the fire is burning
and I can get something up for you."

She looked at me closely when she got me into the
light.

"I wish my boy were as healthy and strong as you,"
she said. "But he is not strong. He sometimes falls
down. He just fell down this afternoon and hurt
himself badly, the poor dear."

1 8 THE ROAD

She mothered him with her voice, with an ineffable
tenderness in it that I yearned to appropriate. I
glanced at him. He sat across the table, slender and
pale, his head swathed in bandages. He did not move,
but his eyes, bright in the lamplight, were fixed upon
me in a steady and wondering stare.

"Just like my poor father," I said. "He had the
falling sickness. Some kind of vertigo. It puzzled
the doctors. They never could make out what was the
matter with him."

"He is dead?" she queried gently, setting before
me half a dozen soft-boiled eggs.

"Dead," I gulped. "Two weeks ago. I was with
him when it happened. We were crossing the street
together. He fell right down. He was never conscious
again. They carried him into a drug-store. He died
there."

And thereat I developed the pitiful tale of my father
■ — how, after my mother's death, he and I had gone
to San Francisco from the ranch; how his pension
(he was an old soldier), and the little other money he
had, was not enough ; and how he had tried book-can-
vassing. Also, I narrated my own woes during the
few days after his death that I had spent alone and for-
lorn on the streets of San Francisco. While that good

CONFESSION IQ

woman warmed up biscuits, fried bacon, and cooked
more eggs, and while I kept pace with her in taking
care of all that she placed before me, I enlarged the
picture of that poor orphan boy and filled in the details.
I became that poor boy. I believed in him as I believed
in the beautiful eggs I was devouring. I could have
wept for myself. I know the tears did get into my
voice at times. It was very effective.

In fact, with every touch I added to the picture, that
kind soul gave me something also. She made up a
lunch for me to carry away. She put in many boiled
eggs, pepper and salt, and other things, and a big
apple. She provided me with three pairs of thick red
woollen socks. She gave me clean handkerchiefs and
other things which I have since forgotten. And all
the time she cooked more and more and I ate
more and more. I gorged like a savage; but then
it was a far cry across the Sierras on a blind bag-
gage, and I knew not when nor where I should find
my next meal. And all the while, like a death's-head
at the feast, silent and motionless, her own unfortunate
boy sat and stared at me across the table. I suppose
I represented to him mystery, and romance, and ad-
venture — all that was denied the feeble flicker of life
that was in him. And yet I could not forbear, once

20 THE ROAD

or twice, from wondering if he saw through me down
to the bottom of my mendacious heart.

"But where are you going to?" she asked me.

"Salt Lake City," said I. "I have a sister there
— a married sister." (I debated if I should make a
Mormon out of her, and decided against it.) "Her
husband is a plumber — a contracting plumber."

Now I knew that contracting plumbers were usually
credited with making lots of money. But I had spoken.
It was up to me to qualify.

"They would have sent me the money for my fare
if I had asked for it," I explained, "but they have had
sickness and business troubles. His partner cheated
him. And so I wouldn't write for the money. I knew
I could make my way there somehow. I let them think
I had enough to get me to Salt Lake City. She is
lovely, and so kind. She was always kind to me. I
guess I'll go into the shop and learn the trade. She
has two daughters. They are younger than I. One
is only a baby."

Of all my married sisters that I have distributed
among the cities of the United States, that Salt Lake
sister is my favorite. She is quite real, too. When
I tell about her, I can see her, and her two little girls,
and her plumber husband. She is a large, motherly

Just as I was leaving, with my arms full ot lunch.

CONFESSION 21

woman, just verging on beneficent stoutness — the
kind, you know, that always cooks nice things and that
never gets angry. She is a brunette. Her husband is
a quiet, easy-going fellow. Sometimes I almost know
him quite well. And who knows but some day I may
meet him? If that aged sailorman could remember
Billy Harper, I see no reason why I should not some
day meet the husband of my sister who lives in Salt
Lake City.

On the other hand, I have a feeling of certitude
within me that I shall never meet in the fiesh my many
parents and grandparents — you see, I invariably killed
them off. Heart disease was my favorite way of get-
ting rid of my mother, though on occasion I did away
with her by means of consumption, pneumonia, and
tj^hoid fever. It is true, as the Winnipeg policemen
wiU attest, that I have grandparents living in England ;
but that was a long time ago and it is a fair assumption
that they are dead by now. At any rate, they have
never written to me.

I hope that woman in Reno will read these lines and
forgive me my gracelessness and unveracity. I do not
apologize, for I am unashamed. It was youth, delight
in life, zest for experience, that brought me to her door.
It did me good. It taught me the intrinsic kindliness

22 THE ROAD

of human nature. I hope it did her good. Anyway,
she may get a good laugh out of it now that she learns
the real inwardness of the situation.

To her my story was "true." She believed in me
and all my family, and she was filled with solicitude
for the dangerous journey I must make ere I won to
Salt Lake City. This solicitude nearly brought me
to grief. Just as I was leaving, my arms full of lunch
and my pockets bulging with fat woollen socks, she
bethought herself of a nephew, or uncle, or relative of
some sort, who was in the railway mail service, and
who, moreover, would come through that night on the
very train on which I was going to steal my ride. The
very thing! She would take me down to the depot,
tell him my story, and get him to hide me in the mail
car. Thus, without danger or hardship, I would be
carried straight through to Ogden. Salt Lake City
was only a few miles farther on. My heart sank. She
grew excited as she developed the plan and with my
sinking heart I had to feign unbounded gladness and
enthusiasm at this solution of my difficulties.

Solution! Why I was bound west that night, and
here was I being trapped into going east. It was
a trap, and I hadn't the heart to tell her that it was all
a miserable lie. And while I made believe that I was

CONFESSION 23

delighted, I was busy cudgelling my brains for some
way to escape. But there was no way. She would
see me into the mail-car — she said so herself — and
then that mail-clerk relative of hers would carry me
to Ogden. And then I would have to beat my way
back over all those hundreds of miles of desert.

But luck was with me that night. Just about the
time she was getting ready to put on her bonnet and
accompany me, she discovered that she had made a
mistake. Her mail-clerk relative was not scheduled to
come through that night. His run had been changed.
He would not come through until two nights afterward.
I was saved, for of course my boundless youth would
never permit me to wait those two days. I optimisti-
cally assured her that I'd get to Salt Lake City quicker
if I started immediately, and I departed with her bless-
ings and best wishes ringing in my ears.

But those woollen socks were great. I know. I
wore a pair of them that night on the blind baggage
of the overland, and that overland went west.

HOLDING HER DOWN

Barring accidents, a good hobo, with youth and
agihty, can hold a train down despite all the efforts of
the train-crew to "ditch" him — given, of course,
night-time as an essential condition. When such a
hobo, under such conditions, makes up his mind that he
is going to hold her down, either he does hold her
down, or chance trips him up. There is no legitimate
way, short of murder, whereby the train-crew can
ditch him. That train-crews have not stopped short
of murder is a current belief in the tramp world. Not
having had that particular experience in my tramp
days I cannot vouch for it personally.

But this I have heard of the "bad" roads. When
a tramp has "gone underneath," on the rods, and the
train is in motion, there is apparently no way of dis-
lodging him until the train stops. The tramp, snugly
ensconced inside the truck, with the four wheels and
all the framework around him, has the "cinch" on the
crew — or so he thinks, until some day he rides the

rods on a bad road. A bad road is usually one on

24

o

O

HOLDING HER DOWN 25

which a short time previously one or several trainmen
have been killed by tramps. Heaven pity the tramp
who is caught "underneath" on such a road— for
caught he is, though the train be going sixty miles an
hour.

The "shack" (brakeman) takes a coupling-pin
and a length of bell-cord to the platform in front of
the truck in which the tramp is riding. The shack
fastens the coupling-pin to the bell-cord, drops the
former down between the platforms, and pays out the
latter. The coupling-pin strikes the ties between the
rails, rebounds against the bottom of the car, and again
strikes the ties. The shack plays it -back and forth,
now to this side, now to the other, lets it out a bit and
hauls it in a bit, giving his weapon opportunity for
every variety of impact and rebound. Every blow
of that flying coupling-pin is freighted with death, and
at sixty miles an hour it beats a veritable tattoo of death.
The next day the remains of that tramp are gathered
up along the right of way, and a line in the local paper
mentions the unknown man, undoubtedly a tramp,
assumably drunk, who had probably fallen asleep on
the track.

As a characteristic illustration of how a capable
hobo can hold her down, I am minded to give the fol-

26 THE ROAD

lowing experience. I was in Ottawa, bound west over
the Canadian Pacific. Three thousand miles of that
road stretched before me ; it was the fall of the year, and
I had to cross Manitoba and the Rocky Mountains.
I could expect "crimpy" weather, and every moment
of delay increased the frigid hardships of the journey.
Furthermore, I was disgusted. The distance between
Montreal and Ottawa is one hundred and twenty miles.
I ought to know, for I had just come over it and it had
taken me six days. By mistake I had missed the main
line and come over a small "jerk" with only two locals
a day on it. And during these six days I had lived
on dry crusts, and not enough of them, begged from the
French peasants.

Furthermore, my disgust had been heightened by
the one day I had spent in Ottawa trying to get an out-
fit of clothing for my long journey. Let me put it
on record right here that Ottawa, with one exception,
is the hardest town in the United States and Canada
to beg clothes in ; the one exception is Washington, D.C.
The latter fair city is the limit. I spent two weeks
there trying to beg a pair of shoes, and then had to go
on to Jersey City before I got them.

But to return to Ottawa. At eight sharp in the
morning I started out after clothes. I worked ener-

It was the largest hand-out I ever saw.

HOLDING HER DOWN 27

getically all day. I swear I walked forty miles. I
interviewed the housewives of a thousand homes.
I did not even knock off work for dinner. And at
six in the afternoon, after ten hours of unremitting and
depressing toil, I was still shy one shirt, while the pair
of trousers I had managed to acquire was tight and,
moreover, was showing all the signs of an early disin-
tegration.

At six I quit work and headed for the railroad yards,
expecting to pick up something to eat on the way.
But my hard luck was still with me. I was refused
food at house after house. Then I got a "hand-out."
My spirits soared, for it was the largest hand-out I
had ever seen in a long and varied experience. It was
a parcel wrapped in newspapers and as big as a mature
suit-case. I hurried to a vacant lot and opened it.
First, I saw cake, then more cake, all kinds and makes
of cake, and then some. It was all cake. No bread
and butter with thick firm slices of meat between —
nothing but cake; and I who of all things abhorred
cake most ! In another age and clime they sat down
by the waters of Babylon and wept. And in a vacant
lot in Canada's proud capital, I, too, sat down and
wept . . . over a mountain of cake. As one looks
upon the face of his dead son, so looked I upon that

28 THE ROAD

multitudinous pastry. I suppose I was an ungrateful
tramp, for I refused to partake of the bounteousness of
the house that had had a party the night before. Evi-
dently the guests hadn't hked cake either.

That cake marked the crisis in my fortunes. Than it
nothing could be worse; therefore things must begin
to mend. And they did. At the very next house I
was given a "set-down." Now a "set-down" is the
height of bliss. One is taken inside, very often is given
a chance to wash, and is then "set-down" at a table.
Tramps love to throw their legs under a table. The
house was large and comfortable, in the midst of spa-
cious grounds and fine trees, and sat well back from
the street. They had just finished eating, and I was
taken right into the dining room — in itself a most
unusual happening, for the tramp who is lucky enough
to win a set-down usually receives it in the kitchen.
A grizzled and gracious Englishman, his matronly
wife, and a beautiful young Frenchwoman talked with
me while I ate.

I wonder if that beautiful young Frenchwoman would
remember, at this late day, the laugh I gave her when
I uttered the barbaric phrase, "two-bits." You see,
I was trying delicately to hit them for a "light piece."
That was how the sum of money came to be mentioned.

M

HOLDING HER DOWN 29

"What?" she said. "Two-bits," said I. Her mouth
was twitching as she again said, "What?" "Two-
bits," said I. Whereat she burst into laughter.
"Won't you repeat it?" she said, when she had regained
control of herself. "Two-bits," said I. And once
more she rippled into uncontrollable silvery laughter.
"I beg your pardon," said she; "but what . . . what
was it you said?" "Two-bits," said I; "is there any-
thing wrong about it?" "Not that I know of," she
gurgled between gasps; "but what does it mean?"
I explained, but I do not remember now whether or not
I got that two-bits out of her ; but I have often won-
dered since as to which of us was the provincial.

When I arrived at the depot, I found, much to my
disgust, a bunch of at least twenty tramps that were
waiting to ride out the- blind baggages of the over-
land. Now two or three tramps on the blind baggage
are all right. They are inconspicuous. But a score !
That meant trouble. No train-crew would ever let all
of us ride.

I may as well explain here what a blind baggage is.
Some mail-cars are built without doors in the ends;
hence, such a car is "blind." The mail-cars that pos-
sess end doors, have those doors always locked. Sup-
pose, after the train has started, that a tramp gets on

30 THE ROAD

to the platform of one of these blind cars. There is
no door, or the door is locked. No conductor or brake-
man can get to him to collect fare or throw him off.
It is clear that the tramp is safe until the next time
the train stops. Then he must get off, run ahead in the
darkness, and when the train pulls by, jump on to
the blind again. But there are ways and ways, as
you shall see.

When the train pulled out, those twenty tramps
swarmed upon the three blinds. Some climbed on
before the train had run a car-length. They were
awkward dubs, and I saw their speedy finish. Of
course, the train-crew was "on," and at the first stop
the trouble began. I jumped off and ran forward along
the track. I noticed that I was accompanied by a
number of the tramps. They evidently knew their
business. When one is beating an overland, he must
always keep well ahead of the train at the stops. I ran
ahead, and as I ran, one by one those that accompanied
me dropped out. This dropping out was the measure
of their skill and nerve in boarding a train.

For this is the way it works. When the train starts,
the shack rides out the blind. There is no way for
him to get back into the train proper except by jumping
off the blind and catching a platform where the car-

HOLDING HER DOWN 31

ends are not "blind." When the train is going as
fast as the shack cares to risk, he therefore jumps off
the bhnd, lets several cars go by, and gets on to the
train. So it is up to the tramp to run so far ahead that
before the blind is opposite him the shack will have
already vacated it.

I dropped the last tramp by about fifty feet, and
waited. The train started. I saw the lantern of the
shack on the first blind. He was riding her out. And
I saw the dubs stand forlornly by the track as the blind
went by. They made no attempt to get on. They
were beaten by their own inefficiency at the very start.
After them, in the line-up, came the tramps that knew
a little something about the game. They let the first
blind, occupied by the shack, go by, and jumped on the
second and third blinds. Of course, the shack jumped
off the first and on to the second as it went by, and
scrambled around there, throwing oS the men who
had boarded it. But the point is that I was so far
ahead that when the first blind came opposite me,
the shack had already left it and was tangled up with
the tramps on the second blind. A half dozen of the
more skilful tramps, who had run far enough ahead,
made the first blind, too.

At the next stop, as we ran forward along the track,

32 THE ROAD

I counted but fifteen of us. Five had been ditched.
The weeding-out process had begun nobly, and it con-
tinued station by station. Now we were fourteen,
now twelve, now eleven, now nine, now eight. It
reminded me of the ten little niggers of the nursery
rhyme. I was resolved that I should be the last little
nigger of all. And why not ? Was I not blessed with
strength, agility, and youth? (I was eighteen, and in
perfect condition.) And didn't I have my "nerve"
with me ? And furthermore, was I not a tramp-royal ?
Were not these other tramps mere dubs and "gay-cats"
and amateurs alongside of me? If I weren't the last
little nigger, I might as well quit the game and get a
job on an alfalfa farm somewhere.

By the time our number had been reduced to four,
the whole train-crew had become interested. From
then on it was a contest of skill and wits, with the odds
in favor of the crew. One by one the three other
survivors turned up missing, until I alone remained.
My, but I was proud of myself ! No Crcesus was ever
prouder of his first million. I was holding her down
in spite of two brakemen, a conductor, a fireman, and
an engineer.

And here are a few samples of the way I held her
down. Out ahead, in the darkness, — so far ahead

I have been hit by lanterns two or three times.

HOLDING HER DOWN 33

that the shack riding out the bhnd must perforce get
ofE before it reaches me, — I get on. Very well. I
am good for another station. When that station is
reached, I dart ahead again to repeat the manoeuvre.
The train pulls out. I watch her coming. There is
no light of a lantern on the blind. Has the crew
abandoned the fight? I do not know. One never
knows, and one must be prepared every moment for
anything. As the first blind comes opposite me, and
I run to leap aboard, I strain my eyes to see if the
shack is on the platform. For all I know he may be
there, with his lantern doused, and even as I spring
upon the steps that lantern may smash down upon
my head. I ought to know. I have been hit by lan-
terns two or three times.

But no, the first blind is empty. The train is gather-
ing speed. I am safe for another station. But am I?
I feel the train slacken speed. On the instant I am
alert. A manoeuvre is being executed against me, and
I do not know what it is. I try to watch on both sides
at once, not forgetting to keep track of the tender in
front of me. From any one, or all, of these three
directions, I may be assailed.

Ah, there it comes. The shack has ridden out the
engine. My first warning is when his feet strike the

34 THE ROAD

Steps of the right-hand side of the blind. Like a flash
I am off the bhnd to the left and running ahead past
the engine. I lose myself in the darkness. The
situation is where it has been ever since the train left
Ottawa. I am ahead, and the train must come past
me if it is to proceed on its journey. I have as good
a chance as ever for boarding her.

I watch carefully. I see a lantern come forward to
the engine, and I do not see it go back from the engine.
It must therefore be still on the engine, and it is a fair
assumption that attached to the handle of that lantern
is a shack. That shack was lazy, or else he would have
put out his lantern instead of trying to shield it as he
came forward. The train pulls out. The first blind
is empty, and I gain it. As before the train slackens, the
shack from the engine boards the blind from one side,
and I go off the other side and run forward.

As I wait in the darkness I am conscious of a big
thrill of pride. The overland has stopped twice for
me — for me, a poor hobo on the bum. I alone have
twice stopped the overland with its many passengers
and coaches, its government mail, and its two thousand
steam horses straining in the engine. And I weigh
only one hundred and sixty pounds, and I haven't
a five-cent piece in my pocket !

I make a spring with my legs and "muscle" myself up with my arms.

HOLDING HER DOWN 35

Again I see the lantern come forward to the engine.
But this time it comes conspicuously. A bit too con-
spicuously to suit me, and I wonder what is up. At
any rate I have something else to be a "-aid of than the
shack on the engine. The train pulls by. Just in
time, before I make my spring, I see the dark form of
a shack, without a lantern, on the first blind. I let
it go by, and prepare to board the second blind. But
the shack on the first blind has jumped off and is at
my heels. Also, I have a fleeting glimpse of the lan-
tern of the shack who rode out the engine. He has
jumped off, and now both shacks are on the ground on
the same side with me. The next moment the second
blind comes by and I am aboard it. But I do not
linger. I have figured out my countermove. As
I dash across the platform I hear the impact of the
shack's feet against the steps as he boards. I jump
off the other side and run forward with the train.
My plan is to run forward and get on the first blind.
It is nip and tuck, for the train is gathering speed. Also,
the shack is behind me and running after me. I guess
I am the better sprinter, for I make the first blind.
I stand on the steps and watch my pursuer. He is
only about ten feet back and running hard ; but now the
train has approximated his own speed, and, relative

36 THE ROAD

to me, he is standing still. I encourage him, hold out
my hand to him; but he explodes in a mighty oath,
gives up and makes the train several cars back.

The train is speeding along, and I am still chuckling
to myself, when, without warning, a spray of water
strikes me. The fireman is playing the hose on me
from the engine. I step forward from the car-plat-
form to the rear of the tender, where lam sheltered under
the overhang. The water flies harmlessly over my
head. My fingers itch to climb up on the tender and
lam that fireman with a chunk of coal ; but I know if
I do that, I'll be massacred by him and the engineer,
and I refrain.

At the next stop I am off and ahead in the darkness.
This time, when the train pulls out, both shacks are
on the first blind. I divine their game. They have
blocked the repetition of my previous play. I cannot
again take the second blind, cross over, and run for-
ward to the first. As soon as the first blind passes and
I do not get on, they swing off, one on each side of the
train. I board the second blind, and as I do so I know
that a moment later, simultaneously, those two shacks
will arrive on both sides of me. It is like a trap. Both
ways are blocked. Yet there is another way out, and
that way is up.

n '1 *» '*i

i. ..-<« a^ ■*■ «*

HOLDING HER DOWN 37

So I do not wait for my pursuers to arrive. I climb
upon the upright ironwork of the platform and stand
upon the wheel of the hand-brake. This has taken up
the moment of grace and I hear the shacks strike the
steps on either side. I don't stop to look. I raise my
arms overhead until my hands rest against the down-
curving ends of the roofs of the two cars. One hand,
of course, is on the curved roof of one car, the other
hand on the curved roof of the other car. By this time
both shacks are coming up the steps. I know it, though
I am too busy to see them. All this is happening in
the space of only several seconds. I make a spring
with my legs and "muscle" myself up with my arms.
As I draw up my legs, both shacks reach for me and
clutch empty air. I know this, for I look down and
see them. Also I hear them swear.

I am now in a precarious position, riding the ends of
the down-curving roofs of two cars at the same time.
With a quick, tense movement, I transfer both legs
to the curve of one roof and both hands to the curve
of the other roof. Then, gripping the edge of that curv-
ing roof, I climb over the curve to the level roof above,
where I sit down to catch my breath, holding on the
while to a ventilator that projects above the surface.
I am on top of the train — on the "decks," as the

38 THE ROAD

tramps call it, and this process I have described is by
them called "decking her." And let me say right here
that only a young and vigorous tramp is able to deck
a passenger train, and also, that the young and vigorous
tramp must have his nerve with him as well.

The train goes on gathering speed, and I know I am
safe until the next stop — but only until the next stop.
If I remain on the roof after the train stops, I know
those shacks will fusillade me with rocks. A healthy
shack can "dewdrop" a pretty heavy chunk of stone
on top of a car — say anywhere from five to twenty
pounds. On the other hand, the chances are large
that at the next stop the shacks will be waiting for me
to descend at the place I climbed up. It is up to me
to climb down at some other platform.

Registering a fervent hope that there are no tunnels
in the next half mile, I rise to my feet and walk down
the train half a dozen cars. And let me say that one
must leave timidity behind him on such a passear.
The roofs of passenger coaches are not made for mid-
night promenades. And if any one thinks they are,
let me advise him to try it. Just let him walk along the
roof of a jolting, lurching car, with nothing to hold on
to but the black and empty air, and when he comes
to the down-curving end of the roof, all wet and slip-

1 rise to my feet and v/alk down the train half a dozen cars.

HOLDING HER DOWN 30

pery with dew, let him accelerate his speed so as to
step across to the next roof, down-curving and wet and
slippery. Believe me, he will learn whether his heart
is weak or his head is giddy.

As the train slows down for a stop, half a dozen plat-
forms from where I had decked her I come down. No
one is on the platform. When the train comes to a
standstill, I slip off to the ground. Ahead, and between
me and the engine, are two moving lanterns. The
shacks are looking for me on the roofs of the cars.
I note that the car beside which I am standing is a
"four-wheeler" — by which is meant that it has only
four wheels to each truck. (When you go underneath
on the rods, be sure to avoid the "six-wheelers," —
they lead to disasters.)

I duck under the train and make for the rods, and
I can tell you I am mighty glad that the train is stand-
ing still. It is the first time I have ever gone under-
neath on the Canadian Pacific, and the internal arrange-
ments are new to me. I try to crawl over the top of
the truck, between the truck and the bottom of the car.
But the space is not large enough for me to squeeze
through. This is new to me. Down in the United
States I am accustomed to going underneath on rapidly
moving trains, seizing a gunnel and swinging my feet

40 THE ROAD

under to the brake-beam, and from there crawling
over the top of the truck and down inside the truck
to a seat on the cross-rod.

FeeHng with my hands in the darkness, I learn that
there is room between the brake-beam and the ground.
It is a tight squeeze. I have to lie fiat and worm my
way through. Once inside the truck, I take my seat
on the rod and wonder what the shacks are thinking
has become of me. The train gets under way. They
have given me up at last.

But have they? At the very next stop, I see a lan-
tern thrust under the next truck to mine at the other
end of the car. They are searching the rods for me.
I must make my get-away pretty lively. I crawl on
my stomach under the brake-beam. They see me and
run for me, but I crawl on hands and knees across the
rail on the opposite side and gain my feet. Then away
I go for the head of the train. I run past the engine
and hide in the sheltering darkness. It is the same old
situation. I am ahead of the train, and the train must
go past me.

The train pulls out. There is a lantern on .the first
blind. I lie low, and see the peering shack go by.
But there is also a lantern on the second blind. That
shack spots me and calls to the shack who has gone

HOLDING HER DOWN 41

past on the first blind. Both jump off. Never mind,
I'll take the third blind and deck her. But heavens,
there is a lantern on the third blind, too. It is the con-
ductor. I let it go by. At any rate I have now the
full train-crew in front of me. I turn and run back
in the opposite direction to what the train is going.
I look over my shoulder. All three lanterns are on
the ground and wobbling along in pursuit. I sprint.
Half the train has gone by, and it is going quite fast,
when I spring aboard. I know that the two shacks
and the conductor will arrive like ravening wolves
in about two seconds. I spring upon the wheel of
the hand-brake, get my hands on the curved ends of
the roofs, and muscle myself up to the decks; while
my disappointed pursuers, clustering on the platform
beneath like dogs that have treed a cat, howl curses
up at me and say unsocial things about my ancestors.
But what does that matter ? It is five to one, includ-
ing the engineer and fireman, and the majesty of the
law and the might of a great corporation are behind
them, and I am beating them out. I am too far down
the train, and I run ahead over the roofs of the coaches
until I am over the fifth or sixth platform from the en-
gine. I peer down cautiously. A shack is on that plat-
form. That he has caught sight of me, I know from the

42 THE ROAD

way he makes a swift sneak inside the car ; and I know,
also, that he is waiting inside the door, all ready to
pounce out on me when I chmb down. But I make
believe that I don't know, and I remain there to en-
courage him in his error. I do not see him, yet I know
that he opens the door once and peeps up to assure
himself that I am still there.

The train slows down for a station. I dangle my
legs down in a tentative way. The train stops. My
legs are still dangling. I hear the door unlatch softly.
He is all ready for me. Suddenly I spring up and
run forward over the roof. This is right over his head,
where he lurks inside the door. The train is standing
still ; the night is quiet, and I take care to make plenty
of noise on the metal roof with my feet. I don't know,
but my assumption is that he is now running forward
to catch me as I descend at the next platform. But
I don't descend there. Halfway along the roof of the
coach, I turn, retrace my way softly, and quickly to
the platform both the shack and I have just aban-
doned. The coast is clear. I descend to the ground
on the off-side of the train and hide in the darkness.
Not a soul has seen me.

I go over to the fence, at the edge of the right of way,
and watch. Ah, ha ! What's that ? I see a lantern

-a

HOLDING HER DOWN 43

on top of the train, moving along from front to rear.
They think I haven't come down, and they are search-
ing the roofs for me. And better than that — on the
ground on each side of the train, moving abreast with the
lantern on top, are two other lanterns. It is a rabbit-
drive, and I am the rabbit. When the shack on top
flushes me, the ones on each side will nab me. I roll
a cigarette and watch the procession go by. Once
past me, I am safe to proceed to the front of the train.
She pulls out, and I make the front blind without
opposition. But before she is fully under way and
just as I am lighting my cigarette, I am aware that the
fireman has climbed over the coal to the back of the
tender and is looking down at me. I am filled with
apprehension. From his position he can mash me to
a jelly with lumps of coal. Instead of which he ad-
dresses me, and I note with relief the admiration in
his voice.

"You son-of-a-gun," is what he says.

It is a high compliment, and I thrill as a school-
boy thrills on receiving a reward of merit.

"Say," I call up to him, "don't you play the hose
on me any more."

"All right," he answers, and goes back to his
work.

44 THE ROAD

I have made friends with the engine, but the shacks
are still looking for me. At the next stop, the shacks
ride out all three blinds, and as before, I let them go
by and deck in the middle of the train. The crew is
on its mettle by now, and the train stops. The shacks
are going to ditch me or know the reason why. Three
times the mighty overland stops for me at that station,
and each time I elude the shacks and make the decks.
But it is hopeless, for they have finally come to an un-
derstanding of the situation. I have taught them
that they cannot guard the train from me. They must
do something else.

And they do it. When the train stops that last time,
they take after me hot-footed. Ah, I see their game.
They are trying to run me down. At first they herd
me back toward the rear of the train. I know my
peril. Once to the rear of the train, it will pull out
with me left behind. I double, and twist, and turn,
dodge through my pursuers, and gain the front of the
train. One shack still hangs on after me. All right,
I'll give him the run of his life, for my wind is good.
I run straight ahead along the track. It doesn't matter.
If he chases me ten miles, he'll nevertheless have to
catch the train, and I can board her at any speed that
he can.

HOLDING HER DOWN 45

So I run on, keeping just comfortably ahead of him
and straining my eyes in the gloom for cattle-guards
and switches that may bring me to grief. Alas ! I
strain my eyes too far ahead, and trip over something
just under my feet, I know not what, some little thing,
and go down to earth in a long, stumbling fall. The
next moment I am on my feet, but the shack has me
by the collar. I do not struggle. I am busy with
breathing deeply and with sizing him up. He is
narrow-shouldered, and I have at least thirty pounds
the better of him in weight. Besides, he is just as
tired as I am, and if he tries to slug me, I'll teach him
a few things.

But he doesn't try to slug me, and that problem is
settled. Instead, he starts to lead me back toward
the train, and another possible problem arises. I see
the lanterns of the conductor and the other shack.
We are approaching them. Not for nothing have I
made the acquaintance of the New York police. Not
for nothing, in box-cars, by water-tanks, and in prison-
cells, have I listened to bloody tales of man-handling.
What if these three men are about to man-handle me ?
Heaven knows I have given them provocation enough.
I think quickly. We are drawing nearer and nearer
to the other two trainmen. I line up the stomach and

46 THE ROAD

the jaw of my captor, and plan the right and left I'll
give him at the first sign of trouble.

Pshaw ! I know another trick I'd like to work on him,
and I almost regret that I did not do it at the moment
I was captured. I could make him sick, what of his
clutch on my collar. His fingers, tight-gripping, are
buried inside my collar. My coat is tightly buttoned.
Did you ever see a tourniquet? Well, this is one.
All I have to do is to duck my head under his arm and
begin to twist. I must twist rapidly — very rapidly.
I know how to do it ; twisting in a violent, jerky way,
ducking my head under his arm with each revolution.
Before he knows it, those detaining fingers of his will
be detained. He will be unable to withdraw them.
It is a powerful leverage. Twenty seconds after I
have started revolving, the blood will be bursting out
of his finger-ends, the delicate tendons will be rupturing,
and all the muscles and nerves will be mashing and crush-
ing together in a shrieking mass. Try it sometime
when somebody has you by the collar. But be quick
— quick as lightning. Also, be sure to hug yourself
while you are revolving — hug your face with your
left arm and your abdomen with your right. You
see, the other fellow might try to stop you with a
punch from his free arm. It would be a good idea.

HOLDING HER DOWN 47

too, to revolve away from that free arm rather
than toward it. A punch going is never so bad as a
punch coming.

That shack will never know how near he was to
being made very, very sick. All that saves him is that
it is not in their plan to man-handle me. When we
draw near enough, he calls out that he has me, and they
signal the train to come on. The engine passes us,
and the three blinds. After that, the conductor and
the other shack swing aboard. But still my captor
holds on to me. I see the plan. He is going to hold
me until the rear of the train goes by. Then he will
hop on, and I shall be left behind — ditched.

But the train has pulled out fast, the engineer trying
to make up for lost time. Also, it is a long train. It
is going very lively, and I know the shack is measuring
its speed with apprehension.

"Think you can make it?" I query innocently.

He releases my collar, makes a quick run, and
swings aboard. A number of coaches are yet to pass
by. He knows it, and remains on the steps, his head
poked out and watching me. In that moment my next
move comes to me. I'll make the last platform. I
know she's going fast and faster, but I'll only get a
roll in the dirt if I fail, and the optimism of youth is

48 THE ROAD

mine. I do not give myself away. I stand with a
dejected droop of shoulder, advertising that I have
abandoned hope. But at the same time I am feeling
with my feet the good gravel. It is perfect footing.
Also I am watching the poked-out head of the shack.
I see it withdrawn. He is confident that the train is
going too fast for me ever to make it.

And the train is going fast — faster than any train
I have ever tackled. As the last coach comes by I
sprint in the same direction with it. It is a swift, short
sprint. I cannot hope to equal the speed of the train,
but I can reduce the difference of our speed to the
minimum, and, hence, reduce the shock of impact,
when I leap on board. In the fleeting instant of dark-
ness I do not see the iron hand-rail of the last plat-
form; nor is there time for me to locate it. I reach
for where I think it ought to be, and at the same instant
my feet leave the ground. It is all in the toss. The
next moment I may be rolling in the gravel with broken
ribs, or arms, or head. But my fingers grip the hand-
hold, there is a jerk on my arms that slightly pivots
my body, and my feet land on the steps with sharp
violence.

I sit down, feeling very proud of myself. In all my
hoboing it is the best bit of train-jumping I have done.

My fingers grip the handhold, and my feet land on the steps with
sharp violence.

HOLDING HER DOWN 49

I know that late at night one is always good for several
stations on the last platform, but I do not care to trust
myself at the rear of the train. At the first stop I run
forward on the off-side of the train, pass the Pullmans,
and duck under and take a rod under a day-coach. At
the next stop I run forward again and take another rod.

I am now comparatively safe. The shacks think I
am ditched. But the long day and the strenuous night
are beginning to tell on me. Also, it is not so windy
nor cold underneath, and I begin to doze. This will
never do. Sleep on the rods spells death, so I crawl
out at a station and go forward to the second blind.
Here I can lie down and sleep ; and here I do sleep —
how long I do not know — for I am awakened by a lan-
tern thrust into my face. The two shacks are staring
at me. I scramble up on the defensive, wondering
as to which one is going to make the first "pass" at me.
But slugging is far from their minds.

"I thought you was ditched," says the shack who
had held me by the collar.

"If you hadn't let go of me when you did, you'd
have been ditched along with me," I answer.

"How's that?" he asks.

"I'd have gone into a clinch with you, that's all,"
is my reply.

50 THE ROAD

They hold a consultation, and their verdict is summed
up in : —

"Well, I guess you can ride. Bo. There's no use
trying to keep you off."

And they go away and leave me in peace to the end
of their division.

I have given the foregoing as a sample of what
"holding her down" means. Of course, I have
selected a fortunate night out of my experiences,
and said nothing of the nights — and many of
them — when I was tripped up by accident and
ditched.

In conclusion, I want to tell of what happened when
I reached the end of the division. On single-track,
transcontinental lines, the freight trains wait at the
divisions and follow out after the passenger trains.
When the division was reached, I left my train, and
looked for the freight that would pull out behind it.
I found the freight, made up on a side-track and wait-
ing. I climbed into a box-car half full of coal and lay
down. In no time I was asleep.

I was awakened by the sliding open of the door.
Day was just dawning, cold and gray, and the freight
had not yet started. A "con" (conductor) was poking
his head inside the door.

HOLDING HER DOWN 51

"Get out of that, you blankety- blank-blank ! " he
roared at me.

I got, and outside I watched him go down the line
inspecting every car in the train. When he got out
of sight I thought to myself that he would never think
I'd have the nerve to climb back into the very car out
of which he had fired me. So back I climbed and lay
down again.

Now that con's mental processes must have been
paralleling mine, for he reasoned that it was the very
thing I would do. For back he came and fired me out.

Now, surely, I reasoned, he will never dream that
I'd do it a third time. Back I went, into the very same
car. But I decided to make sure. Only one side-
door could be opened. The other side-door was nailed
up. Beginning at the top of the coal, I dug a hole
alongside of that door and lay down in it. I heard the
other door open. The con climbed up and looked in
over the top of the coal. He couldn't see me. He
called to me to get out. I tried to fool him by remaining
quiet. But when he began tossing chunks of coal into
the hole on top of me, I gave up and for the third time
was fired out. Also, he informed me in warm terms
of what would happen to me if he caught me in there
again.

52 THE ROAD

I changed my tactics. When a man is paralleling
your mental processes, ditch him. Abruptly break
off your line of reasoning, and go off on a new line.
This I did. I hid between some cars on an adjacent
side-track, and watched. Sure enough, that con
came back again to the car. He opened the door, he
climbed up, he called, he threw coal into the hole I
had made. He even crawled over the coal and looked
into the hole. That satisfied him. Five minutes later
the freight was pulling out, and he was not in sight.
I ran alongside the car, pulled the door open, and
climbed in. He never looked for me again, and I
rode that coal-car precisely one thousand and twenty-
two miles, sleeping most of the time and getting out at
divisions (where the freights always stop for an hour
or so) to beg my food. And at the end of the thousand
and twenty-two miles I lost that car through a happy
incident. I got a "set-down," and the tramp doesn't
live who won't miss a train for a set-down any time.

PICTURES

"What do it matter where or 'ow we die,
So long as we've our 'ealth to watch it all? "

— Sestina of the Tramp-Royal.

Perhaps the greatest charm of tramp-life is the
absence of monotony. In Hobo Land the face of hfe
is protean — an ever changing phantasmagoria, where
the impossible happens and the unexpected jumps out
of the bushes at every turn of the road. The hobo
never knows what is going to happen the next moment ;
hence, he lives only in the present moment. He has
learned the futility of telic endeavor, and knows the
delight of drifting along with the whimsicalities of
Chance.

Often I think over my tramp days, and ever I marvel
at the swift succession of pictures that flash up in my
memory. It matters not where I begin to think;
any day of all the days is a day apart, with a record
of swift-moving pictures all its own. For instance,
I remember a sunny summer morning in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania, and immediately comes to my mind the
auspicious beginning of the day — a "set-down"

53

54 THE ROAD

with two maiden ladies, and not in their kitchen, but
in their dining room, with them beside me at the table.
We ate eggs, out of egg-cups! It was the first time
I had ever seen egg-cups, or heard of egg-cups ! I was
a bit awkward at first, I'll confess; but I was hungry
and unabashed. I mastered the egg-cup, and I mas-
tered the eggs in a way that made those two maiden
ladies sit up.

Why, they ate like a couple of canaries, dabbling
with the one egg each they took, and nibbling at tiny
wafers of toast. Life was low in their bodies; their
blood ran thin; and they had slept warm all night.
I had been out all night, consuming much fuel of my
body to keep warm, beating my way down from a
place called Emporium, in the northern part of the state.
Wafers of toast ! Out of sight ! But each wafer was
no more than a mouthful to me — nay, no more than
a bite. It is tedious to have to reach for another piece
of toast each bite when one is potential with many
bites.

When I was a very little lad, I had a very little dog
called Punch. I saw to his feeding myself. Some one
in the household had shot a lot of ducks, and we had
a fine meat dinner. When I had finished, I prepared
Punch's dinner — a large plateful of bones and tidbits.

A "set-down" with two maiden ladies, with them beside me at

the table.

PICTURES cc

I went outside to give it to him. Now it happened
that a visitor had ridden over from a neighboring ranch,
and with him had come a Newfoundland dog as big as
a calf. I set the plate on the ground. Punch wagged
his tail and began. He had before him a blissful half-
hour at least. There was a sudden rush. Punch was
brushed aside like a straw in the path of a cyclone, and
that Newfoundland swooped down upon the plate. In
spite of his huge maw he must have been trained to quick
lunches, for, in the fleeting instant before he received
the kick in the ribs I aimed at him, he completely en-
gulfed the contents of the plate. He swept it clean.
One last lingering lick of his tongue removed even the
grease stains.

As that big Newfoundland behaved at the plate of
my dog Punch, so behaved I at the table of those two
maiden ladies of Harrisburg. I swept it bare. I
didn't break anything, but I cleaned out the eggs and
the toast and the coffee. The servant brought more,
but I kept her busy, and ever she brought more and
more. The coffee was delicious, but it needn't have
been served in such tiny cups. What time had I to eat
when it took all my time to prepare the many cups of
coffee for drinking?

At any rate, it gave my tongue time to wag. Those

S6 THE ROAD

two maiden ladies, with their pink-and-white complex-
ions and gray curls, had never looked upon the bright
face of adventure. As the "Tramp-Royal" would
have it, they had worked all their lives "on one same
shift." Into the sweet scents and narrow confines of
their uneventful existence I brought the large airs of
the world, freighted with the lusty smells of sweat and
strife, and with the tangs and odors of strange lands
and soils. And right well I scratched their soft palms
with the callous on my own palms — the half-inch
horn that comes of puU-and-haul of rope and long and
arduous hours of caressing shovel-handles. This I
did, not merely in the braggadocio of youth, but to
prove, by toil performed, the claim I had upon their
charity.

Ah, I can see them now, those dear, sweet ladies,
just as I sat at their breakfast table twelve years ago,
discoursing upon the way of my feet in the world, brush-
ing aside their kindly counsel as a real devilish fellow
should, and thrilling them, not alone with my own
adventures, but with the adventures of all the other fel-
lows with whom I had rubbed shoulders and exchanged
confidences. I appropriated them all, the adventures
of the other fellows, I mean ; and if those maiden ladies
had been less trustful and guileless, they could have

mmmm^^ismmmiiMmmmimim

mmmmmmmm^.

I gathered in a newspaper from the doorway of some late-riser.

PICTURES 57

tangled me up beautifully in my chronology. Well,
well, and what of it? It was fair exchange. For
their many cups of coffee, and eggs, and bites of toast,
I gave full value. Right royally I gave them enter-
tainment. My coming to sit at their table was their
adventure, and adventure is beyond price anyway.

Coming along the street, after parting from the
maiden ladies, I gathered in a newspaper from the
doorway of some late-riser, and in a grassy park lay
down to get in touch with the last twenty-four hours
of the world. There, in the park, I met a fellow-hobo
who told me his life-story and who wrestled with me
to join the United States Army. He had given in to
the recruiting officer and was just about to join, and he
couldn't see why I shouldn't join with him. He had
been a member of Coxey's Army in the march to Wash-
ington several months before, and that seemed to have
given him a taste for army life. I, too, was a veteran,
for had I not been a private in Company L of the
Second Division of Kelly's Industrial Army ? — said
Company L being commonly known as the "Nevada
push." But my army experience had had the opposite
effect on me; so I left that hobo to go his way to the
dogs of war, while I "threw my feet" for dinner.

This duty performed, I started to walk across the

58 THE ROAD

bridge over the Susquehanna to the west shore. I for-
get the name of the railroad that ran down that side,
but while lying in the grass in the morning the idea
had come to me to go to Baltimore; so to Baltimore
I was going on that railroad, whatever its name was.
It was a warm afternoon, and part way across the bridge
I came to a lot of fellows who were in swimming off
one of the piers. Off went my clothes and in went I.
The water was fine ; but when I came out and dressed,
I found I had been robbed. Some one had gone through
my clothes. Now I leave it to you if being robbed
isn't in itself adventure enough for one day. I have
known men who have been robbed and who have talked
all the rest of their lives about it. True, the thief that
went through my clothes didn't get much — some
thirty or forty cents in nickels and pennies, and my
tobacco and cigarette papers; but it was all I had,
which is more than most men can be robbed of, for they
have something left at home, while I had no home.
It was a pretty tough gang in swimming there. I
sized up, and knew better than to squeal. So I begged
"the makings," and I could have sworn it was one of
my own papers I rolled the tobacco in.

Then on across the bridge I hiked to the west shore.
Here ran the railroad I was after. No station was in

PICTURES eg

sight. How to catch a freight without walking to a
station was the problem. I noticed that the track
came up a steep grade, culminating at the point where
I had tapped it, and I knew that a heavy freight couldn't
pull up there any too lively. But how lively? On
the opposite side of the track rose a high bank. On
the edge, at the top, I saw a man's head sticking up
from the grass. Perhaps he knew how fast the freights
took the grade, and when the next one went south.
I called out my questions to him, and he motioned to
me to come up.

I obeyed, and when I reached the top, I found four
other men lying in the grass with him. I took in the
scene and knew them for what they were — American
gypsies. In the open space that extended back among
the trees from the edge of the bank were several nonde-
script wagons. Ragged, half-naked children swarmed
over the camp, though I noticed that they took care
not to come near and bother the men-folk. Several
lean, unbeautiful, and toil-degraded women were
pottering about with camp-chores, and one I noticed
who sat by herself on the seat of one of the wagons,
her head drooped forward, her knees drawn up to her
chin and clasped limply by her arms. She did not
look happy. She looked as if she did not care for any-

6o THE ROAD

thing — in this I was wrong, for later I was to learn
that there was something for which she did care. The
full measure of human suffering was in her face, and,
in addition, there was the tragic expression of incapac-
ity for further suffering. Nothing could hurt any
more, was what her face seemed to portray; but in
this, too, I was wrong.

I lay in the grass on the edge of the steep and talked
with the men-folk. We were kin — brothers. I was
the American hobo, and they were the American
gypsy. I knew enough of their argot for conversation,
and they knew enough of mine. There were two more
in their gang, who were across the river "mushing"
in Harrisburg. A "musher" is an itinerant fakir.
This word is not to be confounded with the Klondike
"musher," though the origin of both terms may be
the same ; namely, the corruption of the French marche
ons, to march, to walk, to "mush." The particular
graft of the two mushers who had crossed the river was
umbrella-mending; but what real graft lay behind
their umbrella-mending, I was not told, nor would it
have been polite to ask.

It was a glorious day. Not a breath of wind was
stirring, and we basked in the shimmering warmth of
the sun. From everywhere arose the drowsy hum

PICTURES gj

Of insects, and the balmy air was filled with scents
of the sweet earth and the green growing things. We
were too lazy to do more than mumble on in intermit-
tent conversation. And then, all abruptly, the peace
and quietude was jarred awry by man.

Two bare-legged boys of eight or nine in some minor
way broke some rule of the camp — what it was I
did not know; and a man who lay beside me suddenly
sat up and called to them. He was chief of the tribe,
a man with narrow forehead and narrow-slitted eyes,
whose thin lips and twisted sardonic features explained
why the two boys jumped and tensed like startled
deer at the sound of his voice. The alertness of fear
was in their faces, and they turned, in a panic, to run.
He called to them to come back, and one boy lagged
behind reluctantly, his meagre little frame portraying
in pantomime the struggle within him between fear
and reason. He wanted to come back. His intelli-
gence and past experience told him that to come back
was a lesser evil than to run on; but lesser evil that it
was, it was great enough to put wings to his fear and
urge his feet to flight.

Still he lagged and struggled until he reached the
shelter of the trees, where he halted. The chief of the
tribe did not pursue. He sauntered over to a wagon

62 THE ROAD

and picked up a heavy whip. Then he came back
to the centre of the open space and stood still. He
did not speak. He made no gestures. He was the
Law, pitiless and omnipotent. He merely stood there
and waited. And I knew, and all knew, and the two
boys in the shelter of the trees knew, for what he
waited.

The boy who had lagged slowly came back. His face
was stamped with quivering resolution. He did not
falter. He had made up his mind to take his punish-
ment. And mark you, the punishment was not for
the original offence, but for the offence of running
away. And in this, that tribal chieftain but behaved
as behaves the exalted society in which he lived. We
punish our criminals, and when they escape and run
away, we bring them back and add to their punishment.

Straight up to the chief the boy came, halting at the
proper distance for the swing of the lash. The whip
hissed through the air, and I caught myself with a
start of surprise at the weight of the blow. The thin
little leg was so very thin and little. The flesh showed
white where the lash had curled and bitten, and then,
where the white had shown, sprang up the savage welt,
with here and there along its length little scarlet ooz-
ings where the skin had broken. Again the whip

PICTURES 63

swung, and the boy's whole body winced in anticipa-
tion of the blow, though he did not move from the spot.
His will held good. A second welt sprang up, and a
third. It was not until the fourth landed that the boy
screamed. Also, he could no longer stand still, and
from then on, blow after blow, he danced up and down
in his anguish, screaming ; but he did not attempt to
run away. If his involuntary dancing took him be-
yond the reach of the whip, he danced back into range
again. And when it was all over — a dozen blows —
he went away, whimpering and squealing, among the
wagons.

The chief stood still and waited. The second boy
came out from the trees. But he did not come straight.
He came like a cringing dog, obsessed by little panics
that made him turn and dart away for half a dozen
steps. But always he turned and came back, circling
nearer and nearer to the man, whimpering, making in-
articulate animal-noises in his throat. I saw that he
never looked at the man. His eyes always were fixed
upon the whip, and in his eyes was a terror that made
me sick — the frantic terror of an inconceivably mal-
treated child. I have seen strong men dropping right
and left out of battle and squirming in their death-
throes, I have seen them by scores blown into the air

64 THE ROAD

by bursting shells and their bodies torn asunder;
believe me, the witnessing was as merrymaking and
laughter and song to me in comparison with the way
the sight of that poor child affected me.

The whipping began. The whipping of the first
boy was as play compared with this one. In no time
the blood was running down his thin little legs. He
danced and squirmed and doubled up till it seemed
almost that he was some grotesque marionette operated
by strings. I say "seemed," for his screaming gave
the lie to the seeming and stamped it with reality.
His shrieks were shrill and piercing ; within them no
hoarse notes, but only the thin sexlessness of the voice
of a child. The time came when the boy could stand
it no more. Reason fled, and he tried to run away.
But now the man followed up, curbing his flight,
herding him with blows back always into the open
space.

Then came interruption. I heard a wild smothered
cry. The woman who sat in the wagon seat had got
out and was running to interfere. She sprang between
the man and boy.

"You want some, eh?" said he with the whip.
"All right, then."

He swung the whip upon her. Her skirts were long,

PICTURES 65

SO he did not try for her legs. He drove the lash for
her face, which she shielded as best she could with her
hands and forearms, drooping her head forward be-
tween her lean shoulders, and on the lean shoulders
and arms receiving the blows. Heroic mother! She
knew just what she was doing. The boy, still shriek-
ing, was making his get-away to the wagons.

And all the while the four men lay beside me and
watched and made no move. Nor did I move, and
without shame I say it; though my reason was com-
pelled to struggle hard against my natural impulse
to rise up and interfere. I knew life. Of what use to
the woman, or to me, would be my being beaten to
death by five men there on the bank of the Susque-
hanna? I once saw a man hanged, and though my
whole soul cried protest, my mouth cried not. Had it
cried, I should most likely have had my skull crushed
by the butt of a revolver, for it was the law that the
man should hang. And here, in this gypsy group, it
was the law that the woman should be whipped.

Even so, the reason in both cases that I did not in-
terfere was not that it was the law, but that the law was
stronger than I. Had it not been for those four men
beside me in the grass, right gladly would I have waded
into the man with the whip. And, barring the accident

66 THE ROAD

of the landing on me with a knife or a club in the hands
of some of the various women of the camp, I am con-
fident that I should have beaten him into a mess. But
the four men were beside me in the grass. They made
their law stronger than I.

Oh, believe me, I did my own suffering. I had seen
women beaten before, often, but never had I seen such
a beating as this. Her dress across the shoulders was
cut into shreds. One blow that had passed her guard,
had raised a bloody welt from cheek to chin. Not one
blow, nor two, not one dozen, nor two dozen, but
endlessly, infinitely, that whip-lash smote and curled
about her. The sweat poured from me, and I breathed
hard, clutching at the grass with my hands until I
strained it out by the roots. And all the time my
reason kept whispering, "Fool! Fool!" That welt
on the face nearly did for me. I started to rise to my
feet; but the hand of the man next to me went out to
my shoulder and pressed me down.

"Easy, pardner, easy," he warned me in a low voice.
I looked at him. His eyes met mine unwaveringly.
He was a large man, broad-shouldered and heavy-
muscled; and his face was lazy, phlegmatic, slothful,
withal kindly, yet without passion, and quite soul-
less — a dim soul, unmalicious, unmoral, bovine, and

PICTURES 67

Stubborn. Just an animal he was, with no more than
a faint flickering of inteUigence, a good-natured brute
with the strength and mental caliber of a gorilla. His
hand pressed heavily upon me, and I knew the weight
of the muscles behind. I looked at the other brutes,
two of them unperturbed and incurious, and one of
them that gloated over the spectacle ; and my reason
came back to me, my muscles relaxed, and I sank
down in the grass.

My mind went back to the two maiden ladies with
whom I had had breakfast that morning. Less than
two miles, as the crow flies, separated them from this
scene. Here, in the windless day, under a beneficent
sun, was a sister of theirs being beaten by a brother
of mine. Here was a page of life they could never see
— and better so, though for lack of seeing they would
never be able to understand their sisterhood, nor them-
selves, nor know the clay of which they were made.
For it is not given to woman to live in sweet-scented,
narrow rooms and at the same time be a little sister
to all the world.

The whipping was finished, and the woman, no longer
screaming, went back to her seat in the wagon. Nor
did the other women come to her — just then. They
were afraid. But they came afterward, when a decent

68 THE ROAD

interval had elapsed. The man put the whip away and
rejoined us, flinging himself down on the other side
of me. He was breathing hard from his exertions.
He wiped the sweat from his eyes on his coat-sleeve,
and looked challengingly at me. I returned his look
carelessly ; what he had done was no concern of mine.
I did not go away abruptly. I lay there half an hour
longer, which, under the circumstances, was tact and
etiquette. I rolled cigarettes from tobacco I borrowed
from them, and when I slipped down the bank to the
railroad, I was equipped with the necessary information
for catching the next freight bound south.

Well, and what of it? It was a page out of life,
that's all ; and there are many pages worse, far worse,
that I have seen. I have sometimes held forth (face-
tiously, so my listeners beheved) that the chief distin-
guishing trait between man and the other animals is
that man is the only animal that maltreats the females
of his kind. It is something of which no wolf nor
cowardly coyote is ever guilty. It is something that
even the dog, degenerated by domestication, will not
do. The dog still retains the wild instinct in this
matter, while man has lost most of his wild instincts
— at least, most of the good ones.

Worse pages of life than what I have described?

PICTURES Qg

Read the reports on child labor in the United States,

— east, west, north, and south, it doesn't matter where,

— and know that all of us, profit-mongers that we are,
are typesetters and printers of worse pages of life than
that mere page of wife-beating on the Susquehanna.

I went down the grade a hundred yards to where the
footing beside the track was good. Here I could catch
my freight as it pulled slowly up the hill, and here I
found half a dozen hoboes waiting for the same pur-
pose. Several were playing seven-up with an old pack
of cards. I took a hand. A coon began to shufHe
the deck. He was fat, and young, and moon-faced. He
beamed with good-nature. It fairly oozed from him.
As he dealt the first card to me, he paused and said : —
"Say, Bo, ain't I done seen you befo' ?"
"You sure have," I answered. "An' you didn't
have those same duds on, either."
He was puzzled.

"D'ye remember Buffalo?" I queried.
Then he knew me, and with laughter and ejaculation
hailed me as a comrade ; for at Buffalo his clothes had
been striped while he did his bit of time in the Erie
County Penitentiary. For that matter, my clothes
had been likewise striped, for I had been doing my bit
of time, too.

JO THE ROAD

The game proceeded, and I learned the stake for
which we played. Down the bank toward the river
descended a steep and narrow path that led to a spring
some twenty-five feet beneath. We played on the edge
of the bank. The man who was "stuck" had to take
a small condensed-milk can, and with it carry water
to the winners.

The first game was played and the coon was stuck.
He took the small milk-tin and climbed down the bank,
while we sat above and guyed him. We drank like
fish. Four round trips he had to make for me alone,
and the others were equally lavish with their thirst.
The path was very steep, and sometimes the coon
slipped when part way up, spilled the water, and had
to go back for more. But he didn't get angry. He
laughed as heartily as any of us ; that was why he slipped
so often. Also, he assured us of the prodigious quan-
tities of water he would drink when some one else got
stuck.

When our thirst was quenched, another game was
started. Again the coon was stuck, and again we
drank our fill. A third game and a fourth ended the
same way, and each time that moon-faced darky
nearly died with delight at appreciation of the fate that
Chance was dealing out to him. And we nearly died

PICTURES 71

with him, what of our dehght. We laughed like care-
less children, or gods, there on the edge of the bank.
I know that I laughed till it seemed the top of my
head would come off, and I drank from the milk-tin
till I was nigh water-logged. Serious discussion arose
as to whether we could successfully board the freight
when it pulled up the grade, what of the weight of water
secreted on our persons. This particular phase of
the situation just about finished the coon. He had to
break off from water-carrying for at least five minutes
while he lay down and rolled with laughter.

The lengthening shadows stretched farther and far-
ther across the river, and the soft, cool twilight came
on, and ever we drank water, and ever our ebony cup-
bearer brought more and more. Forgotten was the
beaten woman of the hour before. That was a page
read and turned over; I was busy now with this new
page, and when the engine whistled on the grade, this
page would be finished and another begun ; and so the
book of life goes on, page after page and pages without
end — when one is young.

And then we played a game in which the coon failed
to be stuck. The victim was a lean and dyspeptic-
looking hobo, the one who had laughed least of all of
us. We said we didn't want any water — which was

72 THE ROAD

the truth. Not the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind, nor
the pressure of a pneumatic ram, could have forced
another drop into my saturated carcass. The coon
looked disappointed, then rose to the occasion and
guessed he'd have some. He meant it, too. He had
some, and then some, and then some. Ever the mel-
ancholy hobo climbed down and up the steep bank,
and ever the coon called for more. He drank more
water than all the rest of us put together. The twilight
deepened into night, the stars came out, and he still
drank on. I do believe that if the whistle of the freight
hadn't sounded, he'd be there yet, swilling water and
revenge while the melancholy hobo toiled down
and up.

But the whistle sounded. The page was done.
We sprang to our feet and strung out alongside the
track. There she came, coughing and spluttering
up the grade, the headlight turning night into day and
silhouetting us in sharp relief. The engine passed us,
and we were all running with the train, some boarding
on the side-ladders, others "springing" the side-doors
of empty box-cars and climbing in. I caught a flat-
car loaded with mixed lumber and crawled away into
a comfortable nook. I lay on my back with a news-
paper under my head for a pillow. Above me the

PICTURES 73

Stars were winking and wheeling in squadrons back
and forth as the train rounded the curves, and watch-
ing them I fell asleep. The day was done — one day
of all my days. To-morrow would be another day,
and I was young.

"PINCHED"

I RODE into Niagara Falls in a "side-door Pullman,"
or, in common parlance, a box-car. A flat-car, by
the way, is known amongst the fraternity as a "gon-
dola," with the second syllable emphasized and pro-
nounced long. But to return. I arrived in the after-
noon and headed straight from the freight train to
the falls. Once my eyes were filled with that wonder-
vision of down-rushing water, I was lost. I could
not tear myself away long enough to "batter" the
"privates" (domiciles) for my supper. Even a "set-
down" could not have lured me away. Night came
on, a beautiful night of moonlight, and I lingered by
the falls until after eleven. Then it was up to me to
hunt for a place to "kip."

"Kip," "doss," "flop," "pound your ear," all mean
the same thing ; namely, to sleep. Somehow, I had a
"hunch" that Niagara FaHs was a "bad" town for
hoboes, and I headed out into the country. I climbed
a fence and "flopped" in a field. John Law would
never find me there, I flattered myself. I lay on my

74

E

2

w

"PINCHED" 75

back in the grass and slept like a babe. It was so
balmy warm that I woke up not once all night. But
with the first gray daylight my eyes opened, and I
remembered the wonderful falls. I climbed the fence
and started down the road to have another look at
them. It was early — not more than five o'clock —
and not until eight o'clock could I begin to batter for
my breakfast. I could spend at least three hours by
the river. Alas ! I was fated never to see the river nor
the falls again.

The town was asleep when I entered it. As I came
along the quiet street, I saw three men coming toward
me along the sidewalk. They were walking abreast.
Hoboes, I decided, like myself, who had got up early.
In this surmise I was not quite correct. I was only
sixty-six and two-thirds per cent correct. The men
on each side were hoboes all right, but the man in the
middle wasn't. I directed my steps to the edge of the
sidewalk in order to let the trio go by. But it didn't
go by. At some word from the man in the centre, all
three halted, and he of the centre addressed me.

I piped the lay on the instant. He was a "fly-cop"
and the two hoboes were his prisoners. John Law
was up and out after the early worm. I was a worm.
Had I been richer by the experiences that were to be-

76 THE ROAD

fall me in the next several months, I should have turned
and run like the very devil. He might have shot at
me, but he'd have had to hit me to get me. He'd
have never run after me, for two hoboes in the
hand are worth more than one on the get-away. But
like a dummy I stood still when he halted me. Our
conversation was brief.

"What hotel are you stopping at?" he queried.

He had me. I wasn't stopping at any hotel, and,
since I did not know the name of a hotel in the place,
I could not claim residence in any of them. Also, I
was up too early in the morning. Everything was
against me.

"I just arrived," I said.

"Well, you turn around and walk in front of me,
and not too far in front. There's somebody wants to
see you."

I was "pinched." I knew who wanted to see me.
With that "fly-cop" and the two hoboes at my heels,
and under the direction of the former, I led the way
to the city jail. There we were searched and our names
registered. I have forgotten, now, under which name
I was registered. I gave the name of Jack Drake,
but when they searched me, they found letters addressed
to Jack London. This caused trouble and required

"PINCHED" 77

explanation, all of which has passed from my mind,
and to this day I do not know whether I was pinched
as Jack Drake or Jack London. But one or the other,
it should be there to-day in the prison register of Niagara
Falls. Reference can bring it to light. The time was
somewhere in the latter part of June, 1894. It was only
a few days after my arrest that the great railroad strike
began.

From the office we were led to the "Hobo" and
locked in. The "Hobo" is that part of a prison where
the minor offenders are confined together in a large
iron cage. Since hoboes constitute the principal
division of the minor offenders, the aforesaid iron
cage is called the Hobo. Here we met several hoboes
who had already been pinched that morning, and
every little while the door was unlocked and two or
three more were thrust in on us. At last, when we
totalled sixteen, we were led upstairs into the court-
room. And now I shall faithfully describe what took
place in that court-room, for know that my patriotic
American citizenship there received a shock from which
it has never fully recovered.

In the court-room were the sixteen prisoners, the
judge, and two bailiffs. The judge seemed to act as
his own clerk. There were no witnesses. There were

78 THE ROAD

no citizens of Niagara Falls present to look on and see
how justice was administered in their community.
The judge glanced at the list of cases before him and
called out a name. A hobo stood up. The judge
glanced at a bailiff. "Vagrancy, your Honor," said
the bailiff. "Thirty days," said his Honor. The
hobo sat down, and the judge was calling another name
and another hobo was rising to his feet.

The trial of that hobo had taken just about fifteen
seconds. The trial of the next hobo came off with
equal celerity. The bailiff said, "Vagrancy, your
Honor," and his Honor said, "Thirty days." Thus
it went like clockwork, fifteen seconds to a hobo —
and thirty days.

They are poor dumb cattle, I thought to myself.
But wait till my turn comes; I'll give his Honor a
"spiel." Part way along in the performance, his
Honor, moved by some whim, gave one of us an oppor-
tunity to speak. As chance would have it, this man
was not a genuine hobo. He bore none of the ear-
marks of the professional "stiff." Had he approached
the rest of us, while waiting at a water-tank for a freight,
we should have unhesitatingly classified him as a
"gay-cat." Gay-cat is the synonym for tenderfoot
in Hobo Land. This gay-cat was well along in years

" PINCHED " 79

— somewhere around forty-five, I should judge. His
shoulders were humped a trifle, and his face was seamed
by weather-beat.

For many years, according to his story, he had driven
team for some firm in (if I remember rightly) Lockport,
New York. The firm had ceased to prosper, and
finally, in the hard times of 1893, had gone out of busi-
ness. He had been kept on to the last, though toward
the last his work had been very irregular. He went on
and explained at length his difficulties in getting work
(when so many were out of work) during the succeeding
months. In the end, deciding that he would find
better opportunities for work on the Lakes, he had
started for Buffalo. Of course he was "broke," and
there he was. That was all.

"Thirty days," said his Honor, and called another
hobo's name.

Said hobo got up. "Vagrancy, your Honor," said
the bailiff, and his Honor said, "Thirty days."

And so it went, fifteen seconds and thirty days to
each hobo. The machine of justice was grinding
smoothly. Most likely, considering how early it was
in the morning, his Honor had not yet had his breakfast
and was in a hurry.

But my American blood was up. Behind me were

8o THE ROAD

the many generations of my American ancestry. One
of the kinds of Hberty those ancestors of mine had fought
and died for was the right of trial by jury. This was
my heritage, stained sacred by their blood, and it de-
volved upon me to stand up for it. All right, I threat-
ened to myself; just wait till he gets to me.

He got to me. My name, whatever it was, was called,
and I stood up. The bailiff said, "Vagrancy, your
Honor," and I began to talk. But the judge began
talking at the same time, and he said, "Thirty days."
I started to protest, but at that moment his Honor
was calling the name of the next hobo on the list. His
Honor paused long enough to say to me, "Shut up !"
The bailiff forced me to sit down. And the next
moment that next hobo had received thirty days and
the succeeding hobo was just in process of getting his.

When we had all been disposed of, thirty days to
each stiff, his Honor, just as he was about to dismiss
us, suddenly turned to the teamster from Lockport —
the one man he had allowed to talk.

"Why did you quit your job?" his Honor asked.

Now the teamster had already explained how his
job had quit him, and the question took him aback.

"Your Honor," he began confusedly, "isn't that a
funny question to ask?"

"PINCHED" 8 1

"Thirty days more for quitting your job," said his
Honor, and the court was closed. That was the out-
come. The teamster got sixty days all together, while
the rest of us got thirty days.

We were taken down below, locked up, and given
breakfast. It was a pretty good breakfast, as prison
breakfasts go, and it was the best I was to get for a
month to come.

As for me, I was dazed. Here was I, under sentence,
after a farce of a trial wherein I was denied not only
my right of trial by jury, but my right to plead guilty
or not guilty. Another thing my fathers had fought for
flashed through my brain — habeas corpus. I'd show
them. But when I asked for a lawyer, I was laughed
at. Habeas corpus was all right, but of what good was
it to me when I could communicate with no one outside
the jail? But I'd show them. They couldn't keep
me in jail forever. Just wait till I got out, that was
all. I'd make them sit up. I knew something about
the law and my own rights, and I'd expose their mal-
administration of justice. Visions of damage suits and
sensational newspaper headlines were dancing before
my eyes when the jailers came in and began hustling
us out into the main office.

A policeman snapped a handcuff on my right wrist.

82 THE ROAD

(Ah, ha, thought I, a new indignity. Just wait till
I get out.) On the left wrist of a negro he snapped the
other handcuff of that pair. He was a very tall negro,
well past six feet — so tall was he that when we stood
side by side his hand lifted mine up a trifle in the man-
acles. Also, he was the happiest and the raggedest
negro I have ever seen.

We were all handcuffed similarly, in pairs. This
accomplished, a bright nickel-steel chain was brought
forth, run down through the links of all the handcuffs,
and locked at front and rear of the double-line. We
were now a chain-gang. The command to march
was given, and out we went upon the street, guarded
by two officers. The tall negro and I had the place of
honor. We led the procession.

After the tomb-like gloom of the jail, the outside
sunshine was dazzling. I had never known it to be so
sweet as now, a prisoner with clanking chains, I knew
that I was soon to see the last of it for thirty days.
Down through the streets of Niagara Falls we marched
to the railroad station, stared at by curious passers-by,
and especially by a group of tourists on the veranda
of a hotel that we marched past.

There was plenty of slack in the chain, and with
much rattling and clanking we sat down, two and two,

"PINCHED" 83

in the seats of the smoking-car. Afire with indignation
as I was at the outrage that had been perpetrated on
me and my forefathers, I was nevertheless too prosaically
practical to lose my head over it. This was all new to
me. Thirty days of mystery were before me, and I
looked about me to find somebody who knew the ropes.
For I had already learned that I was not bound for a
petty jail with a hundred or so prisoners in it, but for
a full-grown penitentiary with a couple of thousand
prisoners in it, doing anywhere from ten days to ten
years.

In the seat behind me, attached to the chain by his
wrist, was a squat, heavily-built, powerfully-muscled
man. He was somewhere between thirty-five and
forty years of age. I sized him up. In the corners of
his eyes I saw humor and laughter and kindliness.
As for the rest of him, he was a brute-beast, wholly
unmoral, and with all the passion and turgid violence
of the brute-beast. What saved him, what made him
possible for me, were those corners of his eyes — the
humor and laughter and kindliness of the beast when
unaroused.

He was my "meat." I "cottoned" to him. While
my cuff-mate, the tall negro, mourned with chucklings
and laughter over some laundry he was sure to lose

84 THE ROAD

through his arrest, and while the train rolled on toward
Buffalo, I talked with the man in the seat behind me.
He had an empty pipe. I filled it for him with my pre-
cious tobacco — enough in a single filling to make a
dozen cigarettes. Nay, the more we talked the surer
I was that he was my meat, and I divided all my tobacco
with him.

Now it happens that I am a fluid sort of an organism,
with sufiicient kinship with life to fit myself in 'most
anjrwhere. I laid myself out to fit in with that man,
though little did I dream to what extraordinary good
purpose I was succeeding. He had never been in the
particular penitentiary to which we were going, but
he had done "one-," "two-," and "five-spots" in va-
rious other penitentiaries (a "spot" is a year), and he
was filled with wisdom. We became pretty chummy,
and my heart bounded when he cautioned me to follow
his lead. He called me "Jack," and I called him
"Jack."

The train stopped at a station about five miles from
Buffalo, and we, the chain-gang, got off. I do not
remember the name of this station, but I am confident
that it is some one of the following : Rocklyn, Rockwood,
Black Rock, Rockcastle, or Newcastle. But whatever
the name of the place, we were walked a short distance

G
Oh

S

"PINCHED" 85

and then put on a street-car. It was an old-fashioned
car, with a seat, running the full length, on each side.
All the passengers who sat on one side were asked to
move over to the other side, and we, with a great clank-
ing of chain, took their places. We sat facing them, '
I remember, and I remember, too, the awed expression
on the faces of the women, who took us, undoubtedly,
for convicted murderers and bank-robbers. I tried
to look my fiercest, but that cuflE-mate of mine, the
too happy negro, insisted on rolling his eyes, laughing,
and reiterating, "O Lawdy! Lawdy!"

We left the car, walked some more, and were led
into the ofl&ce of the Erie County Penitentiary. Here
we were to register, and on that register one or the
other of my names will be found. Also, we were in-
formed that we must leave in the office all our valuables :
money, tobacco, matches, pocket-knives, and so forth.

My new pal shook his head at me.

"If you do not leave your things here, they will be
confiscated inside," warned the official.

Still my pal shook his head. He was busy with his
hands, hiding his movements behind the other fellows.
(Our handcuffs had been removed.) I watched him,
and followed suit, wrapping up in a bundle in my
handkerchief all the things I wanted to take in. These

86 THE ROAD

bundles the two of us thrust into our shirts. I no-
ticed that our fellow-prisoners, with the exception of
one or two who had watches, did not turn over their
belongings to the man in the office. They were de-
termined to smuggle them in somehow, trusting to
luck ; but they were not so wise as my pal, for they
did not wrap their things in bundles.

Our erstwhile guardians gathered up the handcuffs
and chain and departed for Niagara Falls, while we,
under new guardians, were led away into the prison.
While we were in the office, our number had been added
to by other squads of newly arrived prisoners, so that
we were now a procession forty or fifty strong.

Know, ye unimprisoned, that traffic is as restricted
inside a large prison as commerce was in the Middle
Ages. Once inside a penitentiary, one cannot move
about at will. Every few steps are encountered great
steel doors or gates which are always kept locked. We
were bound for the barber-shop, but we encountered
delays in the unlocking of doors for us. We were thus
delayed in the first "hall" we entered. A "hall" is not
a corridor. Imagine an oblong cube, built out of bricks
and rising six stories high, each story a row of cells,
say fifty cells in a row — in short, imagine a cube of
colossal honeycomb. Place this cube on the ground

Each story a row of cells.

"PINCHED" 87

and enclose it in a building with a roof overhead and
walls all around. Such a cube and encompassing
building constitute a "hall" in the Erie County Peni-
tentiary. Also, to complete the picture, see a narrow
gallery, with steel railing, running the full length of
each tier of cells and at the ends of the oblong cube
see all these galleries, from both sides, connected by
a fire-escape system of narrow steel stairways.

We were halted in the first hall, waiting for some
guard to unlock a door. Here and there, moving about,
vrere convicts, with close-cropped heads and shaven
faces, and garbed in prison stripes. One such convict
I noticed above us on the gallery of the third tier of
cells. He was standing on the gallery and leaning
forward, his arms resting on the railing, himself appar-
ently oblivious of our presence. He seemed staring
into vacancy. My pal made a slight hissing noise.
The convict glanced down. Motioned signals passed
between them. Then through the air soared the hand-
kerchief bundle of my pal. The convict caught it,
and like a flash it was out of sight in his shirt and he
was staring into vacancy. My pal had told me to
follow his lead. I watched my chance when the guard's
back was turned, and my bundle followed the other
one into the shirt of the convict.

88 THE ROAD

A minute later the door was unlocked, and we filed
into the barber-shop. Here were more men in convict
stripes. They were the prison barbers. Also, there
were bath-tubs, hot water, soap, and scrubbing-brushes.
We were ordered to strip and bathe, each man to scrub
his neighbor's back — a needless precaution, this
compulsory bath, for the prison swarmed with vermin.
After the bath, we were each given a canvas clothes-
bag.

"Put all your clothes in the bags," said the guard.
"It's no good trying to smuggle anything in. You've
got to line up naked for inspection. Men for thirty
days or less keep their shoes and suspenders. Men
for more than thirty days keep nothing."

This announcement was received with consternation.
How could naked men smuggle anything past an in-
spection? Only my pal and I were safe. But it was
right here that the convict barbers got in their work.
They passed among the poor newcomers, kindly volun-
teering to take charge of their precious little belongings,
and promising to return them later in the day. Those
barbers were philanthropists — to hear them talk.
As in the case of Fra Lippo Lippi, never was there such
prompt disemburdening. Matches, tobacco, rice-paper,
pipes, knives, money, everything, flowed into the capa-

"PINCHED" 89

cious shirts of the barbers. They fairly bulged with
the spoil, and the guards made believe not to see. To
cut the story short, nothing was ever returned. The
barbers never had any intention of returning what
they had taken. They considered it legitimately theirs.
It was the barber-shop graft. There were many grafts
in that prison, as I was to learn ; and I, too, was destined
to become a grafter — thanks to my new pal.

There were several chairs, and the barbers worked
rapidly. The quickest shaves and hair-cuts I have
ever seen were given in that shop. The men lathered
themselves, and the barbers shaved them at the rate
of a minute to a man. A hair-cut took a trifle longer.
In three minutes the down of eighteen was scraped from
my face, and my head was as smooth as a billiard-ball
just sprouting a crop of bristles. Beards, mustaches,
like our clothes and everything, came off. Take my
word for it, we were a villainous-looking gang when
they got through with us. I had not realized before
how really altogether bad we were.

Then came the line-up, forty or fifty of us, naked
as Kipling's heroes who stormed Lungtungpen. To
search us was easy. There were only our shoes and
ourselves. Two or three rash spirits, who had doubted
the barbers, had the goods found on them — which

90 THE ROAD

goods, namely, tobacco, pipes, matches, and small
change, were quickly confiscated. This over, our new
clothes were brought to us — stout prison shirts, and
coats and trousers conspicuously striped. I had al-
ways lingered under the impression that the convict
stripes were put on a man only after he had been con-
victed of a felony. I lingered no longer, but put on
the insignia of shame and got my first taste of marching
the lock-step.

In single file, close together, each man's hands on
the shoulders of the man in front, we marched on into
another large hall. Here we were ranged up against
the wall in a long line and ordered to strip our left
arms. A youth, a medical student who was getting
in his practice on cattle such as we, came down the
line. He vaccinated just about four times as rapidly
as the barbers shaved. With a final caution to
avoid rubbing our arms against anything, and to let
the blood dry so as to form the scab, we were led
away to our cells. Here my pal and I parted, but
not before he had time to whisper to me, "Suck it
out."

As soon as I was locked in, I sucked my arm clean.
And afterward I saw men who had not sucked and
who had horrible holes in their arms into which I

"PINCHED" 91

could have thrust my fist. It was their own fault.
They could have sucked.

In my cell was another man. We were to be cell-
mates. He was a young, manly fellow, not talkative,
but very capable, indeed as splendid a fellow as one
could meet with in a day's ride, and this in spite of the
fact that he had just recently finished a two-year term
in some Ohio penitentiary.

Hardly had we been in our cell half an hour, when
a convict sauntered down the gallery and looked in.
It was my pal. He had the freedom of the hall, he
explained. He was unlocked at six in the morning
and not locked up again till nine at night. He was in
with the "push" in that hall, and had been promptly
appointed a trusty of the kind technically known as
"hall-man." The man who had appointed him was
also a prisoner and a trusty, and was known as "First
Hall-man." There were thirteen hall-men in that
hall. Ten of them had charge each of a gallery of cells,
and over them were the First, Second, and Third Hall-
men.

We newcomers were to stay in our cells for the rest
of the day, my pal informed me, so that the vaccine
would have a chance to take. Then next morning we
would be put to hard labor in the prison-yard.

92 THE ROAD

"But I'll get you out of the work as soon as I can,"
he promised. "I'll get one of the hall-men fired and
have you put in his place."

He put his hand into his shirt, drew out the hand-
kerchief containing my precious belongings, passed it in
to me through the bars, and went on down the gallery.

I opened the bundle. Everything was there. Not
even a match was missing. I shared the makings of
a cigarette with my cell-mate. When I started to strike
a match for a light, he stopped me. A flimsy, dirty
comforter lay in each of our bunks for bedding. He
tore off a narrow strip of the thin cloth and rolled it
tightly and telescopically into a long and slender cyl-
inder. This he lighted with a precious match. The
cylinder of tight-rolled cotton cloth did not flame.
On the end a coal of fire slowly smouldered. It would
last for hours, and my cell-mate called it a "punk."
And when it burned short, all that was necessary was
to make a new punk, put the end of it against the old,
blow on them, and so transfer the glowing coal. Why,
we could have given Prometheus pointers on the con-
serving of fire.

At twelve o'clock dinner was served. At the bottom
of our cage door was a small opening like the entrance
of a runway in a chicken-yard. Through this were

" PINCHED " 93

thrust two hunks of dry bread and two pannikins of
"soup." A portion of soup consisted of about a quart
of hot water with floating on its surface a lonely drop
of grease. Also, there was some salt in that water.

We drank the soup, but we did not eat the bread.
Not that we were not hungry, and not that the bread
was uneatable. It was fairly good bread. But we
had reasons. My cell-mate had discovered that our
cell was alive with bed-bugs. In all the cracks and
interstices between the bricks where the mortar had
fallen out flourished great colonies. The natives even
ventured out in the broad daylight and swarmed over
the waUs and ceiling by hundreds. My cell-mate was
wise in the ways of the beasts. Like Childe Roland,
dauntless the slug-horn to his lips he bore. Never was
there such a battle. It lasted for hours. It was sham-
bles. And when the last survivors fled to their brick-
and-mortar fastnesses, our work was only half done.
We chewed mouthfuls of our bread until it was reduced
to the consistency of putty. When a fleeing belligerent
escaped into a crevice between the bricks, we promptly
walled him in with a daub of the chewed bread. We
toiled on until the light grew dim and until every hole,
nook, and cranny was closed. I shudder to think of
the tragedies of starvation and cannibalism that

94 THE ROAD

must have ensued behind those bread-plastered
ramparts.

We threw ourselves on our bunks, tired out and hun-
gry, to wait for supper. It was a good day's work
well done. In the weeks to come we at least should
not suffer from the hosts of vermin. We had foregone
our dinner, saved our hides at the expense of our stom-
achs; but we were content. Alas for the futility of
human effort ! Scarcely was our long task completed
when a guard unlocked our door. A redistribution of
prisoners was being made, and we were taken to an-
other cell and locked in two galleries higher up.

Early next morning our cells were unlocked, and
down in the hall the several hundred prisoners of us
formed the lock-step and marched out into the prison-
yard to go to work. The Erie Canal runs right by the
back yard of the Erie County Penitentiary. Our task
was to unload canal-boats, carrying huge stay-bolts
on our shoulders, like railroad ties, into the prison.
As I worked I sized up the situation and studied the
chances for a get-away. There wasn't the ghost of
a show. Along the tops of the walls marched guards
armed with repeating rifles, and I was told, furthermore,
that there were machine-guns in the sentry- towers.

I did not worry. Thirty days were not so long.

Our Bunks.

" PINCHED " 95

I'd stay those thirty days, and add to the store of ma-
terial I intended to use, when I got out, against the
harpies of justice. I'd show what an American boy
could do when his rights and privileges had been
trampled on the way mine had. I had been denied
my right of trial by jury; I had been denied my right
to plead guilty or not guilty ; I had been denied a trial
even (for I couldn't consider that what I had received
at Niagara Falls was a trial) ; I had not been allowed
to communicate with a lawyer nor any one, and hence
had been denied my right of suing for a writ of habeas
corpus; my face had been shaved, my hair cropped
close, convict stripes had been put upon my body;
I was forced to toil hard on a diet of bread and water
and to march the shameful lock-step with armed guards
over me — and all for what? What had I done?
What crime had I committed against the good citizens
of Niagara Falls that all this vengeance should be
wreaked upon me? I had not even violated their
"sleeping-out" ordinance. I had slept outside their
jurisdiction, in the country, that night. I had not even
begged for a meal, or battered for a "light piece" on
their streets. All that I had done was to walk along
their sidewalk and gaze at their picayune waterfall.
And what crime was there in that? Technically I

96 THE ROAD

was guilty of no misdemeanor. All right, I'd show
them when I got out.

The next day I talked with a guard. I wanted to
send for a lawyer. The guard laughed at me. So
did the other guards. I really was incommunicado
so far as the outside world was concerned. I tried
to write a letter out, but I learned that all letters were
read, and censured or confiscated, by the prison au-
thorities, and that "short-timers" were not allowed
to write letters anyway. A little later I tried smug-
gling letters out by men who were released, but I learned
that they were searched and the letters found and
destroyed. Never mind. It all helped to make it a
blacker case when I did get out.

But as the prison days went by (which I shall describe
in the next chapter), I "learned a few." I heard tales
of the police, and police-courts, and lawyers, that were
unbelievable and monstrous. Men, prisoners, told
me of personal experiences with the police of great
cities that were awful. And more awful were the hear-
say tales they told me concerning men who had died
at the hands of the police and who therefore could not
testify for themselves. Years afterward, in the report
of the Lexow Committee, I was to read tales true and
more awful than those told to me. But in the mean-

"PINCHED" 97

time, during the first days of my imprisonment, I
scoffed at what I heard.

As the days went by, however, I began to grow
convinced. I saw with my own eyes, there in that
prison, things unbehevable and monstrous. And the
more convinced I became, the profounder grew the
respect in me for the sleuth-hounds of the law and for
the whole institution of criminal justice.

My indignation ebbed away, and into my being
rushed the tides of fear. I saw at last, clear-eyed, what
I was up against. I grew meek and lowly. Each day
I resolved more emphatically to make no rumpus when
I got out. All I asked, when I got out, was a chance
to fade away from the landscape. And that was just
what I did do when I was released. I kept my tongue
between my teeth, walked softly, and sneaked for
Pennsylvania, a wiser and a humbler man.

THE PEN

For two days I toiled in the prison-yard. It was
heavy work, and, in spite of the fact that I maHngered
at every opportunity, I was played out. This was
because of the food. No man could work hard on
such food. Bread and water, that was all that was given
us. Once a week we were supposed to get meat ; but
this meat did not always go around, and since all
nutriment had first been boiled out of it in the making
of soup, it didn't matter whether one got a taste of it
once a week or not.

Furthermore, there was one vital defect in the bread-

and-water diet. While we got plenty of water, we did

not get enough of the bread. A ration of bread was

about the size of one's two fists, and three rations a

day were given to each prisoner. There was one good

thing, I must say, about the water — it was hot. In

the morning it was called "coffee," at noon it was

dignified as "soup," and at night it masqueraded as

"tea." But it was the same old water all the time.

The prisoners called it "water bewitched." In the

98

J3

THE PEN 99

morning it was black water, the color being due to
boiling it with burnt bread-crusts. At noon it was
served minus the color, with salt and a drop of grease
added. At night it was served with a purplish-auburn
hue that defied all speculation; it was darn poor tea,
but it was dandy hot water.

We were a hungry lot in the Erie County Pen.
Only the " long- timers " knew what it was to have
enough to eat. The reason for this was that they would
have died after a time on the fare we " short- timers "
received. I know that the long-timers got more sub-
stantial grub, because there was a whole row of them
on the ground floor in our hall, and when I was a trusty,
I used to steal from their grub while serving them.
Man cannot live on bread alone and not enough of it.

My pal delivered the goods. After two days of work
in the yard I was taken out of my cell and made a
trusty, a "hall-man." At morning and night we
served the bread to the prisoners in their cells; but at
twelve o'clock a different method was used. The con-
victs marched in from work in a long line. As they
entered the door of our hall, they broke the lock-step
and took their hands down from the shoulders of their
line-mates. Just inside the door were piled trays of
bread, and here also stood the First Hall-man and two

100 THE ROAD

ordinary hall-men. I was one of the two. Our task
was to hold the trays of bread as the line of convicts
filed past. As soon as the tray, say, that I was holding
was emptied, the other hall-man took my place with
a full tray. And when his was emptied, I took his
place with a full tray. Thus the line tramped steadily
by, each man reaching with his right hand and taking
one ration of bread from the extended tray.

The task of the First Hall-man was different. He
used a club. He stood beside the tray and watched.
The hungry wretches could never get over the delusion
that sometime they could manage to get two rations of
bread out of the tray. But in my experience that some-
time never came. The club of the First Hall-man had
a way of flashing out — quick as the stroke of a tiger's
claw — to the hand that dared ambitiously. The
First Hall-man was a good judge of distance, and he
had smashed so many hands with that club that he had
become infallible. He never missed, and he usually
punished the offending convict by taking his one ration
away from him and sending him to his cell to make
his meal off of hot water.

And at times, while all these men lay hungry in their
cells, I have seen a hundred or so extra rations of bread
hidden away in the cells of the hall-men. It would

THE PEN lOI

seem absurd, our retaining this bread. But it was
one of our grafts. We were economic masters inside
our hall, turning the trick in ways quite similar to the
economic masters of civilization. We controlled the
food-supply of the population, and, just like'our brother
bandits outside, we made the people pay through the
nose for it. We peddled the bread. Once a week, the
men who worked in the yard received a five-cent plug
of chewing tobacco. This chewing tobacco was the
coin of the realm. Two or three rations of bread for
a plug was the way we exchanged, and they traded,
not because they loved tobacco less, but because they
loved bread more. Oh, I know, it was like taking candy
from a baby, but what would you? We had to live.
And certainly there should be some reward for initiative
and enterprise. Besides, we but patterned ourselves
after our betters outside the walls, who, on a larger
scale, and under the respectable disguise of merchants,
bankers, and captains of industry, did precisely what
we were doing. What awful things would have hap-
pened to those poor wretches if it hadn't been for us,
I can't imagine. Heaven knows we put bread into
circulation in the Erie County Pen. Ay, and we en-
couraged frugality and thrift ... in the poor devils
who forewent their tobacco. And then there was our

102 THE ROAD

example. In the breast of every convict there we
implanted the ambition to become even as we and run
a graft. Saviours of society — I guess yes.

Here was a hungry man without any tobacco. Maybe
he was a profligate and had used it all up on himself.
Very good ; he had a pair of suspenders. I exchanged
half a dozen rations of bread for it — or a dozen rations
if the suspenders were very good. Now I never wore
suspenders, but that didn't matter. Around the corner
lodged a long-timer, doing ten years for manslaughter.
He wore suspenders, and he wanted a pair. I could
trade them to him for some of his meat. Meat was
what I wanted. Or perhaps he had a tattered, paper-
covered novel. That was treasure-trove. I could
read it and then trade it off to the bakers for cake, or
to the cooks for meat and vegetables, or to the firemen
for decent coffee, or to some one or other for the news-
paper that occasionally filtered in, heaven alone knows
how. The cooks, bakers, and firemen were prisoners
like myself, and they lodged in our hall in the first
row of cells over us.

In short, a full-grown system of barter obtained in
the Erie County Pen. There was even money in circu-
lation. This money was sometimes smuggled in by the
short-timers, more frequently came from the barber-

THE PEN 103

shop graft, where the newcomers were mulcted, but
most of all flowed from the cells of the long-timers —
though how they got it I don't know.

What of his preeminent position, the First Hall-
man was reputed to be quite wealthy. In addition
to his miscellaneous grafts, he grafted on us. We
farmed the general wretchedness, and the First Hall-
man was Farmer- General over all of us. We held
our particular grafts by his permission, and we had
to pay for that permission. As I say, he was reputed
to be wealthy; but we never saw his money, and he
lived in a cell all to himself in solitary grandeur.

But that money was made in the Pen I had direct
evidence, for I was cell-mate quite a time with the
Third Hall-man. He had over sixteen dollars. He
used to count his money every night after nine o'clock,
when we were locked in. Also, he used to tell me
each night what he would do to me if I gave away
on him to the other hall-men. You see, he was afraid
of being robbed, and danger threatened him from
three different directions. There were the guards.
A couple of them might jump upon him, give him a
good beating for alleged insubordination, and throw
him into the "solitaire" (the dungeon); and in the
mix-up that sixteen dollars of his would take wings.

104 THE ROAD

Then again, the First Hall-man could have taken it
all away from him by threatening to dismiss him and
fire him back to hard labor in the prison-yard. And
yet again, there were the ten of us who were ordinary
hall-men. If we got an inkling of his wealth, there
was a large liability, some quiet day, of the whole
bunch of us getting him into a corner and dragging
him down. Oh, we were wolves, believe me — just
like the fellows who do business in Wall Street.

He had good reason to be afraid of us, and so had
I to be afraid of him. He was a huge, illiterate brute,
an ex-Chesapeake-Bay-oyster-pirate, an "ex-con" who
had done five years in Sing Sing, and a general all-
around stupidly carnivorous beast. He used to trap
sparrows that flew into our hall through the open bars.
When he made a capture, he hurried away with it into
his cell, where I have seen him crunching bones and
spitting out feathers as he bolted it raw. Oh, no, I
never gave away on him to the other hall-men. This
is the first time I have mentioned his sixteen dollars.

But I grafted on him just the same. He was in
love with a woman prisoner who was confined in the
"female department." He could neither read nor
write, and I used to read her letters to him and write
his replies. And I made him pay for it, too. But

THE PEN 105

they were good letters. I laid myself out on them,
put in my best licks, and furthermore, I won her for
him; though I shrewdly guess that she was in love,
not with him, but with the humble scribe. I repeat,
those letters were great.

Another one of our grafts was "passing the punk."
We were the celestial messengers, the fire-bringers,
in that iron world of bolt and bar. When the men
came in from work at night and were locked in their
cells, they wanted to smoke. Then it was that we re-
stored the divine spark, running the "galleries, from
cell to cell, with our smouldering punks. Those who
were wise, or with whom we did business, had their
punks all ready to light. Not every one got divine
sparks, however. The guy who refused to dig up,
went sparkless and smokeless to bed. But what
did we care? We had the immortal cinch on him,
and if he got fresh, two or three of us would pitch on
him and give him "what-for."

You see, this was the working-theory of the hall-
men. There were thirteen of us. We had some-
thing like half a thousand prisoners in our hall. We
were supposed to do the work, and to keep order.
The latter was the function of the guards, which they
turned over to us. It was up to us to keep order; if

I06 THE ROAD

we didn't, we'd be fired back to hard labor, most prob-
ably with a taste of the dungeon thrown in. But so
long as we maintained order, that long could we work
our own particular grafts.

Bear with me a moment and look at the problem.
Here were thirteen beasts of us over half a thousand
other beasts. It was a living hell, that prison, and it
was up to us thirteen there to rule. It was impossible,
considering the nature of the beasts, for us to rule
by kindness. We ruled by fear. Of course, behind
us, backing us up, were the guards. In extremity
we called upon them for help ; but it would bother
them if we called upon them too often, in which event
we could depend upon it that they would get more
efficient trusties to take our places. But we did not
call upon them often, except in a quiet sort of way,
when we wanted a cell unlocked in order to get at a
refractory prisoner inside. In such cases all the
guard did was to unlock the door and walk away so
as not to be a witness of what happened when half
a dozen hall-men went inside and did a bit of man-
handling.

As regards the details of this man-handling I shall
say nothing. And after all, man-handling was merely
one of the very minor unprintable horrors of the Erie

■

1

' ^^^ ■

1 \- m

BBHmnH

^^■■t

1

i ^cc^^:^

■

■i

WANW^

1

J'
\ r

"p-, .

All the guard did was to unlock the door.

THE PEN 107

County Pen. I say "unprintable"; and in justice
I must also say "unthinkable." They were unthink-
able to me until I saw them, and I was no spring
chicken in the ways of the world and the awful abysses
of human degradation. It would take a deep plummet
to reach bottom in the Erie County Pen, and I do but
skim lightly and facetiously the surface of things as
I there saw them.

At times, say in the morning when the prisoners
came down to wash, the thirteen of us would be prac-
tically alone in the midst of them, and every last one
of them had it in for us. Thirteen against five hundred,
and we ruled by fear. We could not permit the slight-
est infraction of rules, the slightest insolence. If we
did, we were lost. Our own rule was to hit a man as
soon as he opened his mouth — hit him hard, hit
him with, anything. A broom-handle, end-on, in the
face, had a very sobering effect. But that was not
all. Such a man must be made an example of; so
the next rule was to wade right in and follow him up.
Of course, one was sure that every hall-man in sight
would come on the run to join in the chastisement;
for this also was a rule. Whenever any hall-man was
in trouble with a prisoner, the duty of any other hall-
man who happened to be around was to lend a fist.

I08 THE ROAD

Never mind the merits of the case — wade in and
hit, and hit with anything; in short, lay the man
out.

I remember a handsome young mulatto of about
twenty who got the insane idea into his head that
he should stand for his rights. And he did have the
right of it, too; but that didn't help him any. He
lived on the topmost gallery. Eight hall-men took
the conceit out of him in just about a minute and a
half — for that was the length of time required to
travel along his gallery to the end and down five flights
of steel stairs. He travelled the whole distance on
every portion of his anatomy except his feet, and the
eight hall-men were not idle. The mulatto struck
the pavement where I was standing watching it all.
He regained his feet and stood upright for a moment.
In that moment he threw his arms wide apart and
omitted an awful scream of terror and pain and heart-
break. At the same instant, as in a transformation
scene, the shreds of his stout prison clothes fell from
him, leaving him wholly naked and streaming blood
from every portion of the surface of his body. Then
he collapsed in a heap, unconscious. He had learned
his lesson, and every convict within those walls who
heard him scream had learned a lesson. So had I

THE PEN 109

learned mine. It is not a nice thing to see a man's
heart broken in a minute and a half.

The following will illustrate how we drummed up
business in the graft of passing the punk. A row of
newcomers is installed in your cells. You pass along
before the bars with your punk. "Hey, Bo, give us a
light," some one calls to you. Now this is an adver-
tisement that that particular man has tobacco on him.
You pass in the punk and go your way. A little later
you come back and lean up casually against the bars.
"Say, Bo, can you let us have a little tobacco?" is what
you say. If he is not wise to the game, the chances are
that he solemnly avers that he hasn't any more tobacco.
All very well. You condole with him and go your
way. But you know that his punk will last him only
the rest of that day. Next day you come by, and he
says again, "Hey, Bo, give us a light." And you say,
"You haven't any tobacco and you don't need a light."
And you don't give him any, either. Half an hour after,
or an hour or two or three hours, you will be passing
by and the man will call out to you in mild tones,
"Come here, Bo." And you come. You thrust your
hand between the bars and have it filled with
precious tobacco. Then you give him a light.

Sometimes, however, a newcomer arrives, upon

no THE ROAD

whom no grafts are to be worked. The mysterious
word is passed along that he is to be treated decently.
Where this word originated I could never learn. The
one thing patent is that the man has a "pull." It
may be with one of the superior hall-men ; it may be with
one of the guards in some other part of the prison;
it may be that good treatment has been purchased
from grafters higher up ; but be it as it may, we know
that it is up to us to treat him decently if we want to
avoid trouble.

We hall-men were middle-men and common carriers.
We arranged trades between convicts confined in dif-
ferent parts of the prison, and we put through the ex-
change. Also, we took our commissions coming and
going. Sometimes the objects traded had to go through
the hands of half a dozen middle-men, each of whom
took his whack, or in some way or anoth°'- was paid
for his service.

Sometimes one was in debt for services, and some-
times one had others in his debt. Thus, I entered
the prison in debt to the convict who smuggled in my
things for me. A week or so afterward, one of the
firemen passed a letter into my hand. It had been
given to him by a barber. The barber had received
it from the convict who had smuggled in my things.

THE PEN in

Because of my debt to him I was to carry the letter on.
But he had not written the letter. The original sender
was a long-timer in his hall. The letter was for a
woman prisoner in the female department. But
whether it was intended for her, or whether she, in
turn, was one of the chain of go-betweens, I did not
know. All that I knew was her description, and that
it was up to me to get it into her hands.

Two days passed, during which time I kept the letter
in my possession; then the opportunity came. The
women did the mending of all the clothes worn by the
convicts. A number of our hall-men had to go to the
female department to bring back huge bundles of
clothes. I fixed it with the First Hall-man that I was
to go along. Door after door was unlocked for us
as we threaded our way across the prison to the women's
quarters. We entered a large room where the women
sat working at their mending. My eyes were peeled
for the woman who had been described to me. I
located her and worked near to her. Two eagle-
eyed matrons were on watch. I held the letter in my
palm, and I looked my intention at the woman. She
knew I had something for her; she must have been
expecting it, and had set herself to divining, at the mo-
ment we entered, which of us was the messenger. But

112 THE ROAD

one of the matrons stood within two feet of her. Al-
ready the hall-men were picking up the bundles they
were to carry away. The moment was passing. I
delayed with my bundle, making believe that it was
not tied securely. Would that matron ever look away ?
Or was I to fail? And just then another woman cut
up playfully with one of the hall-men — stuck out her
foot and tripped him, or pinched him, or did something
or other. The matron looked that way and repri-
manded the woman sharply. Now I do not know
whether or not this was all planned to distract the
matron's attention, but I did know that it was my
opportunity. My particular woman's hand dropped
from her lap down by her side. I stooped to pick up
my bundle. From my stooping position I slipped the
letter into her hand, and received another in exchange.
The next moment the bundle was on my shoulder,
the matron's gaze had returned to me because I was
the last hall-man, and I was hastening to catch up with
my companions. The letter I had received from the
woman I turned over to the fireman, and thence it
passed through the hands of the barber, of the convict
who had smuggled in my things, and on to the long-
timer at the other end.
Often we conveyed letters, the chain of communi-

I stooped to pick up my bundle.

THE PEN 113

cation of which was so complex that we knew neither
sender nor sendee. We were but Hnks in the chain.
Somewhere, somehow, a convict would thrust a letter
into my hand with the instruction to pass it on to the
next link. All such acts were favors to be reciprocated
later on, when I should be acting directly with a prin-
cipal in transmitting letters, and from whom I should
be receiving my pay. The whole prison was covered
by a network of lines of communication. And we
who were in control of the system of communication,
naturally, since we were modelled after capitalistic
society, exacted heavy tolls from our customers. It
was service for profit with a vengeance, though we
were at times not above giving service for love.

And all the time I was in the Pen I was making
myself solid with my pal. He had done much for me,
and in return he expected me to do as much for him.
When we got out, we were to travel together, and, it
goes without saying, pull off "jobs" together. For
my pal was a criminal — oh, not a jewel of the
first water, merely a petty criminal who would steal
and rob, commit burglary, and, if cornered, not stop
short of murder. Many a quiet hour we sat and talked
together. He had two or three jobs in view for the
immediate future, in which my work was cut out for

114 THE ROAD

me, and in which I joined in planning the details.
I had been with and seen much of criminals, and my
pal never dreamed that I was only fooling him, giving
him a string thirty days long. He thought I was the
real goods, liked me because I was not stupid, and liked
me a bit, too, I think, for myself. Of course I had
not the slightest intention of joining him in a life of
sordid, petty crime; but I'd have been an idiot to
throw away all the good things his friendship made
possible. When one is on the hot lava of hell, he can-
not pick and choose his path, and so it was with me in
the Erie County Pen. I had to stay in with the "push,"
or do hard labor on bread and water; and to stay in
with the push I had to make good with my pal.

Life was not monotonous in the Pen. Every day
something was happening: men were having fits,
going crazy, fighting, or the hall-men were getting
drunk. Rover Jack, one of the ordinary hall-men,
was our star "oryide." He was a true "profesh,"
a " blowed-in-the-glass " stiff, and as such received
all kinds of latitude from the hall-men in authority.
Pittsburg Joe, who was Second Hall-man, used to
join Rover Jack in his jags; and it was a saying of
the pair that the Erie County Pen was the only place
where a man could get "slopped" and not be arrested.

THE PEN 115

I never knew, but I was told that bromide of potas-
sium, gained in devious ways from the dispensary,
was the dope they used. But I do know, whatever
their dope was, that they got good and drunk on
occasion.

Our hall was a common stews, filled with the ruck
and the filth, the scum and dregs, of society — heredi-
tary inefficients, degenerates, wrecks, lunatics, addled
intelligences, epileptics, monsters, weaklings, in short,
a very nightmare of humanity. Hence, fits flourished
with us. These fits seemed contagious. When one
man began throwing a fit, others followed his lead.
I have seen seven men down with fits at the same time,
making the air hideous with their cries, while as many
more lunatics would be raging and gibbering up and
down. Nothing was ever done for the men with fits
except to throw cold water on them. It was useless
to send for the medical student or the doctor. They
were not to be bothered with such trivial and frequent
occurrences.

There was a young Dutch boy, about eighteen years
of age, who had fits most frequently of all. He usually
threw one every day. It was for that reason that we
kept him on the ground floor farther down in the row
of cells in which we lodged. After he had had a few

Il6 THE ROAD

fits in the prison-yard, the guards refused to be bothered
with him any more, and so he remained locked up in
his cell all day with a Cockney cell-mate, to keep him
company. Not that the Cockney was of any use.
Whenever the Dutch boy had a fit, the Cockney became
paralyzed with terror.

The Dutch boy could not speak a word of English.
He was a farmer's boy, serving ninety days as punish-
ment for having got into a scrap with some one. He
prefaced his fits with howling. He howled like a wolf.
Also, he took his fits standing up, which was very in-
convenient for him, for his fits always culminated in
a headlong pitch to the floor. Whenever I heard the
long wolf -howl rising, I used to grab a broom and run
to his cell. Now the trusties were not allowed keys
to the cells, so I could not get in to him. He would
stand up in the middle of his narrow cell, shivering
convulsively, his eyes rolled backward till only the
whites were visible, and howling like a lost soul. Try
as I would, I could never get the Cockney to lend him
a hand. While he stood and howled, the Cockney
crouched and trembled in the upper bunk, his terror-
stricken gaze fixed on that awful figure, with eyes rolled
back, that howled and howled. It was hard on him,
too, the poor devil of a Cockney. His own reason was

THE PEN 117

not any too firmly seated, and the wonder is that he
did not go mad.

All that I could do was my best with the broom. I
would thrust it through the bars, train it on Dutchy's
chest, and wait. As the crisis approached he would
begin swaying back and forth. I followed this sway-
ing with the broom, for there was no telling when
he would take that dreadful forward pitch. But when
he did, I was there with the broom, catching him and
easing him down. Contrive as I would, he never came
down quite gently, and his face was usually bruised
by the stone floor. Once down and writhing in con-
vulsions, I'd throw a bucket of water over him. I
don't know whether cold water was the right thing or
not, but it was the custom in the Erie County Pen.
Nothing more than that was ever done for him. He
would lie there, wet, for an hour or so, and then crawl
into his bunk. I knew better than to run to a guard
for assistance. What was a man with a fit, anyway?

In the adjoining cell lived a strange character — a
man who was doing sixty days for eating swill out of
Barnum's swill-barrel, or at least that was the way he
put it. He was a badly addled creature, and, at first,
very mild and gentle. The facts of his case were as
he had stated them. He had strayed out to the circus

Il8 THE ROAD

ground, and, being hungry, had made his way to the
barrel that contained the refuse from the table of the
circus people. "And it was good bread," he often
assured me; "and the meat was out of sight." A
policeman had seen him and arrested him, and there
he was.

Once I passed his cell with a piece of stiff thin wire
in my hand. He asked me for it so earnestly that I
passed it through the bars to him. Promptly, and with
no tool but his fingers, he broke it into short lengths
and twisted them into half a dozen very creditable
safety pins. He sharpened the points on the stone
floor. Thereafter I did quite a trade in safety pins.
I furnished the raw material and peddled the finished
product, and he did the work. As wages, I paid him
extra rations of bread, and once in a while a chunk
of meat or a piece of soup-bone with some marrow
inside.

But his imprisonment told on him, and he grew
violent day by day. The hall-men took delight in
teasing him. They filled his weak brain with stories
of a great fortune that had been left him. It was in
order to rob him of it that he had been arrested and
sent to jail. Of course, as he himself knew, there was
no law against eating out of a barrel. Therefore he

THE PEN 119

was wrongly imprisoned. It was a plot to deprive him
of his fortune.

The first I knew of it, I heard the hall-men laughing
about the string they had given him. Next he held a
serious conference with me, in which he told me of his
millions and the plot to deprive him of them, and in
which he appointed me his detective. I did my best
to let him down gently, speaking vaguely of a mistake,
and that it was another man with a similar name who
was the rightful heir. I left him quite cooled down;
but I couldn't keep the hall-men away from him, and
they continued to string him worse than ever. In the
end, after a most violent scene, he threw me down,
revoked my private detectiveship, and went on strike.
My trade in safety pins ceased. He refused to make
any more safety pins, and he peppered me with
raw material through the bars of his cell when I
passed by.

I could never make it up with him. The other hall-
men told him that I was a detective in the employ of
the conspirators. And in the meantime the hall-men
drove him mad with their stringing. His fictitious
wrongs preyed upon his mind, and at last he became
a dangerous and homicidal lunatic. The guards re-
fused to listen to his tale of stolen millions, and he

120 THE ROAD

accused them of being in the plot. One day he threw
a pannikin of hot tea over one of them, and then
his case was investigated. The warden talked with
him a few minutes through the bars of his cell.
Then he was taken away for examination before the
doctors. He never came back, and I often wonder if
he is dead, or if he still gibbers about his millions in
some asylum for the insane.

At last came . the day of days, my release. It
was the day of release for the Third Hall-man as
well, and the short-timer girl I had won for him was
waiting for him outside the wall. They went away
blissfully together. My pal and I went out together,
and together we walked down into Buffalo. Were
we not to be together always? We begged together
on the "main-drag" that day for pennies, and what
we received was spent for "shupers" of beer — I
don't know how they are spelled, but they are pro-
nounced the way I have spelled them, and they cost
three cents. I was watching my chance all the time
for a get-away. From some bo on the drag I managed
to learn what time a certain freight pulled out. I
calculated my time accordingly. When the moment
came, my pal and I were in a saloon. Two foaming
shupers were before us. I'd have liked to say good-by.

i'?

^^^

-^,

.,

N

m

^^^

i^m

i

>

■ #

it.

.'>>-

wmr^-

s^HR. ;

,

K^ '^^ ^^,5

1 ■: I / "^-"

N

-■

^»

''2^^^:=^"--....,

^W^^^T^- ^ —

^l_lg^

^^

^^^^^^^BSs^^^^HS

^^^^^f^BBBH

A few minutes later I was on board a freight.

THE PEN 121

He had been good to me. But I did not dare. I
went out through the rear of the saloon and jumped
the fence. It was a swift sneak, and a few minutes
later I was on board a freight and heading south on
the Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad.

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT

In the course of my tramping I encountered hundreds
of hoboes, whom I hailed or who hailed me, and with
whom I waited at water-tanks, "boiled-up," cooked
"mulHgans," "battered" the "drag" or "privates,"
and beat trains, and who passed and were seen never
again. On the other hand, there were hoboes who
passed and repassed with amazing frequency, and
others, still, who passed like ghosts, close at hand,
unseen, and never seen.

It was one of the latter that I chased clear across
Canada over three thousand miles of railroad, and never
once did I lay eyes on him. His "monica" was Sky-
sail Jack. I first ran into it at Montreal. Carved with
a jack-knife was the skysail-yard of a ship. It was
perfectly executed. Under it was "Skysail Jack."
Above was "B.W. 9-15-94." This latter conveyed
the information that he had passed through Montreal
bound west, on October 15, 1894. He had one day
the start of me. "Sailor Jack" was my monica at
that particular time, and promptly I carved it along-

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 123

side of his, along with the date and the information that
I, too, was bound west.

I had misfortune in getting over the next hundred
miles, and eight days later I picked up Skysail Jack's
trail three hundred miles west of Ottawa. There it
was, carved on a water-tank, and by the date I saw
that he likewise had met with delay. He was only
two days ahead of me. I was a "comet" and "tramp-
royal," so was Skysail Jack; and it was up to my
pride and reputation to catch up with him. I "rail-
roaded" day and night, and I passed him; then turn
about he passed me. Sometimes he was a day or so
ahead, and sometimes I was. From hoboes, bound
east, I got word of him occasionally, when he happened
to be ahead; and from them I learned that he had
become interested in Sailor Jack and was making
inquiries about me.

We'd have made a precious pair, I am sure, if we'd
ever got together; but get together we couldn't. I
kept ahead of him clear across Manitoba, but he led
the way across Alberta, and early one bitter gray morn-
ing, at the end of a division just east of Kicking Horse
Pass, I learned that he had been seen the night before
between Kicking Horse Pass and Rogers' Pass. It
was rather curious the way the information came to

124 THE ROAD

me. I had been riding all night in a "side-door Pull-
man" (box-car), and nearly dead with cold had crawled
out at the division to beg for food. A freezing fog was
drifting past, and I "hit" some firemen I found in the
round-house. They fixed me up with the leavings from
their lunch-pails, and in addition I got out of them
nearly a quart of heavenly "Java" (coffee). I heated
the latter, and, as I sat down to eat, a freight pulled in
from the west. I saw a side-door open and a road-kid
climb out. Through the drifting fog he limped over
to me. He was stiff with cold, his lips blue. I shared
my Java and grub with him, learned about Skysail
Jack, and then learned about him. Behold, he was
from my own town, Oakland, California, and he was
a member of the celebrated Boo Gang — a gang with
which I had affiliated at rare intervals. We talked
fast and bolted the grub in the half -hour that followed.
Then my freight pulled out, and I was on it, bound
west on the trail of Skysail Jack.

I was delayed between the passes, went two days
without food, and walked eleven miles on the third
day before I got any, and yet I succeeded in passing
Skysail Jack along the Fraser River in British Colum-
bia. I was riding "passengers" then and making
time; but he must have been riding passengers, too,

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 1 25

and with more luck or skill than I,' for he got into Mis-
sion ahead of me.

Now Mission was a junction, forty miles east of
Vancouver. From the junction one could proceed
south through Washington and Oregon over the North-
ern Pacific. I wondered which way Skysail Jack
would go, for I thought I was ahead of him. As for
myself I was still bound west to Vancouver. I pro-
ceeded to the water-tank to leave that information, and
there, freshly carved, with that day's date upon it, was
Skysail Jack's monica. I hurried on into Vancouver.
But he was gone. He had taken ship immediately
and was still flying west on his world-adventure. Truly,
Skysail Jack, you were a tramp-royal, and your mate
was the "wind that tramps the world." I take off
my hat to you. You were " bio wed-in- the-glass " all
right. A week later I, too, got my ship, and on board
the steamship Umatilla, in the forecastle, was work-
ing my way down the coast to San Francisco. Sky-
sail Jack and Sailor Jack — gee ! if we'd ever got
together.

Water-tanks are tramp directories. Not all in idle
wantonness do tramps carve their monicas, dates, and
courses. Often and often have I met hoboes earnestly
inquiring if I had seen anywhere such and such a "stiff"

126 THE ROAD

or his monica. And more than once I have been able
to give the monica of recent date, the water-tank, and
the direction in which he was then bound. And
promptly the hobo to whom I gave the information
lit out after his pal. I have met hoboes who, in trying
to catch a pal, had pursued clear across the continent
and back again, and were still going.

"Monicas" are the nom-de-rails that hoboes assume
or accept when thrust upon them by their fellows.
Leary Joe, for instance, was timid, and was so named
by his fellows. No self-respecting hobo would select
Stew Bum for himself. Very few tramps care to re-
member their pasts during which they ignobly worked,
so monicas based upon trades are very rare, though I
remember having met the following : Moulder Blackey,
Painter Red, Chi Plumber, Boiler-maker, Sailor Boy,
and Printer Bo. "Chi" (pronounced shy), by the
way, is the argot for "Chicago."

A favorite device of hoboes is to base their monicas
on the localities from which they hail, as: New York
Tommy, Pacific Slim, Buffalo Smithy, Canton Tim,
Pittsburg Jack, Syracuse Shine, Troy Mickey, K. L.
Bill, and Connecticut Jimmy. Then there was "Slim
Jim from Vinegar Hill, who never worked and never
will." A "shine" is always a negro, so called, pos-

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 127

sibly, from the high hghts on his countenance. Texas
Shine or Toledo Shine convey both race and nativity.

Among those that incorporated their race, I recollect
the following : Frisco Sheeny, New York Irish, Michi-
gan French, English Jack, Cockney Kid, and Mil-
waukee Dutch. Others seem to take their monicas
in part from the color-schemes stamped upon them at
birth, such as : Chi Whitey, New Jersey Red, Boston
Blackey, Seattle Browney, and Yellow Dick and Yel-
low Belly — the last a Creole from Mississippi, who,
I suspect, had his monica thrust upon him.

Texas Royal, Happy Joe, Bust Connors, Burley Bo,
Tornado Blackey, and Touch McCall used more
imagination in rechristening themselves. Others, with
less fancy, carry the names of their physical peculiari-
ties, such as: Vancouver Slim, Detroit Shorty, Ohio
Fatty, Long Jack, Big Jim, Little Joe, New York Blink,
Chi Nosey, and Broken-backed Ben.

By themselves come the road-kids, sporting an in-
finite variety of monicas. For example, the following,
whom here and there I have encountered : Buck Kid,
BHnd Kid, Midget Kid, Holy Kid, Bat Kid, Swift
Kid, Cookey Kid, Monkey Kid, Iowa Kid, Corduroy
Kid, Orator Kid (who could tell how it happened),
and Lippy Kid (who was insolent, depend upon it).

128 THE ROAD

On the water-tank at San Marcial, New Mexico, a
dozen years ago, was the following hobo bill of fare : —
(i) Main-drag fair.

(2) Bulls not hostile.

(3) Round-house good for kipping.

(4) North-bound trains no good,
(s) Privates no good.

(6) Restaurants good for cooks only.

(7) Railroad House good for night-work only.
Number one conveys the information that begging

for money on the main street is fair; number two,
that the police will not bother hoboes ; number three,
that one can sleep in the round-house. Number four,
however, is ambiguous. The north-bound trains may
be no good to beat, and they may be no good to beg.
Number five means that the residences are not good
to beggars, and number six means that only hoboes
that have been cooks can get grub from the restaurants.
Number seven bothers me. I cannot make out whether
the Railroad House is a good place for any hobo to
beg at night, or whether it is good only for hobo-cooks
to beg at night, or whether any hobo, cook or non-cook,
can lend a hand at night, helping the cooks of the Rail-
road House with their dirty work and getting something
to eat in payment.

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 129

But to return to the hoboes that pass in the night.
I remember one I met in California. He was a Swede,
but he had Hved so long in the United States that one
couldn't guess his nationahty. He had to tell it on
himself. In fact, he had come to the United States
when no more than a baby. I ran into him first at
the mountain town of Truckee. "Which way, Bo?"
was our greeting, and "Bound east" was the answer
each of us gave. Quite a bunch of "stiffs" tried to
ride out the overland that night, and I lost the Swede
in the shuffle. Also, I lost the overland.

I arrived in Reno, Nevada, in a box-car that was
promptly side-tracked. It was Sunday morning, and
after I threw my feet for breakfast, I wandered over
to the Piute camp to watch the Indians gambling.
And there stood the Swede, hugely interested. Of
course we got together. He was the only acquaintance
I had in that region, and I was his only acquaint-
ance. We rushed together hke a couple of dissatis-
fied hermits, and together we spent the day, threw our
feet for dinner, and late in the afternoon tried to "nail"
the same freight. But he was ditched, and I rode her
out alone, to be ditched myself in the desert twenty
miles beyond.

Of all desolate places, the one at which I was ditched

I30 THE ROAD

was the limit. It was called a flag-station, and it
consisted of a shanty dumped inconsequentially into
the sand and sage-brush. A chill wind was blowing,
night was coming on, and the solitary telegraph opera-
tor who lived in the shanty was afraid of me. I knew
that neither grub nor bed could I get out of him. It
was because of his manifest fear of me that I did not
believe him when he told me that east-bound trains
never stopped there. Besides, hadn't I been thrown
off of an east-bound train right at that very spot not
five minutes before ? He assured me that it had stopped
under orders, and that a year might go by before an-
other was stopped under orders. He advised me that
it was only a dozen or fifteen miles on to Wadsworth
and that I'd better hike. I elected to wait, however,
and I had the pleasure of seeing two west-bound freights
go by without stopping, and one east-bound freight.
I wondered if the Swede was on the latter. It was up
to me to hit the ties to Wadsworth, and hit them I did,
much to the telegraph operator's relief, for I neglected
to burn his shanty and murder him. Telegraph opera-
tors have much to be thankful for. At the end of half
a dozen miles, I had to get off the ties and let the east-
bound overland go by. She was going fast, but I
caught sight of a dim form on the first "blind" that
looked like the Swede.

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 131

That was the last I saw of him for weary days. I
hit the high places across those hundreds of miles of
Nevada desert, riding the overlands at night, for speed,
and in the day-time riding in box-cars and getting
my sleep. It was early in the year, and it was cold in
those upland pastures. Snow lay here and there on
the level, all the mountains were shrouded in white,
and at night the most miserable wind imaginable blew
off from them. It was not a land in which to hnger.
And remember, gentle reader, the hobo goes through
such a land, without shelter, without money, begging
his way and sleeping at night without blankets. This
last is something that can be realized only by experience.

In the early evening I came down to the depot at
Ogden. The overland of the Union Pacific was puHing
east, and I was bent on making connections. Out in
the tangle of tracks ahead of the engine I encountered
a figure slouching through the gloom. It was the
Swede. We shook hands like long-lost brothers, and
discovered that our hands were gloved. "Where'd
ye glahm 'em?" I asked. "Out of an engine-cab,"
he answered ; "and where did you ? " "They belonged
to a fireman," said I; "he was careless."

We caught the blind as the overland pulled out, and
mighty cold we found it. The way led up a narrow

132 THE ROAD

gorge between snow-covered mountains, arid we shiv-
ered and shook and exchanged confidences about how
we had covered the ground between Reno and Ogden.
I had closed my eyes for only an hour or so the pre-
vious night, and the blind was not comfortable enough
to suit me for a snooze. At a stop, I went forward
to the engine. We had on a "double-header" (two
engines) to take us over the grade.

The pilot of the head engine, because it "punched
the wind," I knew would be too cold ; so I selected the
pilot of the second engine, which was sheltered by the
first engine. I stepped on the cowcatcher and found
the pilot occupied. In the darkness I felt out the
form of a young boy. He was sound asleep. By
squeezing, there was room for two on the pilot, and
I made the boy hudge over and crawled up beside him.
It was a "good" night; the "shacks" (brakemen)
didn't bother us, and in no time we were asleep. Once
in a while hot cinders or heavy jolts aroused me, when
I snuggled closer to the boy and dozed off to the cough-
ing of the engines and the screeching of the wheels.

The overland made Evanston, Wyoming, and went
no farther. A wreck ahead blocked the line. The
dead engineer had been brought in, and his body
attested the peril of the way. A tramp, also, had been

"Shacks."

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 133

killed, but his body had not been brought in. I talked
with the boy. He was thirteen years old. He had run
away from his folks in some place in Oregon, and was
heading east to his grandmother. He had a tale of
cruel treatment in the home he had left that rang true;
besides, there was no need for him to lie to me, a name-
less hobo on the track.

And that boy was going some, too. He couldn't
cover the ground fast enough. When the division
superintendents decided to send the overland back
over the way it had come, then up on a cross "jerk"
to the Oregon Short Line, and back along that road
to tap the Union Pacific the other side of the wreck,
that boy climbed upon the pilot and said he was
going to stay with it. This was too much for the Swede
and me. It meant travelling the rest of that frigid
night in order to gain no more than a dozen miles or
so. We said we'd wait till the wreck was cleared away,
and in the meantime get a good sleep.

Now it is no snap to strike a strange town, broke, at
midnight, in cold weather, and find a place to sleep.
The Swede hadn't a penny. My total assets consisted
of two dimes and a nickel. From some of the town
boys we learned that beer was five cents, and that the
saloons kept open all night. There was our meat.

134 THE ROAD

Two glasses of beer would cost ten cents, there would
be a stove and chairs, and we could sleep it out till
morning. We headed for the lights of a saloon, walk-
ing briskly, the snow crunching under our feet, a chill
little wind blowing through us.

Alas, I had misunderstood the town boys. Beer
was five cents in one saloon only in the whole burg, and
we didn't strike that saloon. But the one we entered
was all right. A blessed stove was roaring white-hot ;
there were cosey, cane-bottomed arm-chairs, and a none-
too-pleasant-looking barkeeper who glared suspiciously
at us as we came in. A man cannot spend continuous
days and nights in his clothes, beating trains, fighting
soot and cinders, and sleeping anywhere, and main-
tain a good "front." Our fronts were decidedly
against us; but what did we care? I had the price
in my jeans.

"Two beers," said I nonchalantly to the barkeeper,
and while he drew them, the Swede and I leaned against
the bar and yearned secretly for the arm-chairs by the
stove.

The barkeeper set the two foaming glasses before us,
and with pride I deposited the ten cents. Now I was
dead game. As soon as I learned my error in the price
I'd have dug up another ten cents. Never mind if

We entered them through hatchways in the top of the car.

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 135

it did leave me only a nickel to my name, a stranger
in a strange land. I'd have paid it all right. But that
barkeeper never gave me a chance. As soon as his
eyes spotted the dime I had laid down, he seized the
two glasses, one in each hand, and dumped the beer
into the sink behind the bar. At the same time, glar-
ing at us malevolently, he said : —

"You've got scabs on your nose. You've got scabs
on your nose. You've got scabs on your nose. See !"

I hadn't either, and neither had the Swede. Our
noses were all right. The direct bearing of his words
was beyond our comprehension, but the indirect bearing
was clear as print: he didn't like our looks, and beer
was evidently ten cents a glass.

I dug down and laid another dime on the bar, re-
marking carelessly, "Oh, I thought this was a five-
cent joint."

"Your money's no good here," he answered, shoving
the two dimes across the bar to me.

Sadly I dropped them back into my pocket, sadly
we yearned toward the blessed stove and the arm-chairs,
and sadly we went out the door into the frosty night.

But as we went out the door, the barkeeper, still
glaring, called after us, "You've got scabs on your
nose, see!"

136 THE ROAD

I have seen much of the world since then, journeyed
among strange lands and peoples, opened many books,
sat in many lecture-halls; but to this day, though I
have pondered long and deep, I have been unable
to divine the meaning in the cryptic utterance of that
barkeeper in Evanston, Wyoming. Our noses were all
right.

We slept that night over the boilers in an electric-
lighting plant. How we discovered that "kipping"
place I can't remember. We must have just headed
for it, instinctively, as horses head for water or carrier-
pigeons head for the home-cote. But it was a night
not pleasant to remember. A dozen hoboes were
ahead of us on top the boilers, and it was too hot
for all of us. To complete our misery, the engineer
would not let us stand around down below. He gave
us our choice of the boilers or the outside snow.

"You said you wanted to sleep, and so, damn you,
sleep," said he to me, when, frantic and beaten out
by the heat, I came down into the fire-room.

"Water," I gasped, wiping the sweat from my eyes,
"water."

He pointed out of doors and assured me that down
there somewhere in the blackness I'd find the river.
I started for the river, got lost in the dark, fell into two

ffi

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 13;

or three drifts, gave it up, and returned half-frozen to
the top of the boilers. When I had thawed out, I was
thirstier than ever. Around me the hoboes were
moaning, groaning, sobbing, sighing, gasping, pant-
ing, rolling and tossing and floundering heavily in
their torment. We were so many lost souls toasting
on a griddle in hell, and the engineer, Satan Incarnate,
gave us the sole alternative of freezing in the outer cold.
The Swede sat up and anathematized passionately the
wanderlust in man that sent him tramping and suffer-
ing hardships such as that.

"When I get back to Chicago," he perorated, "I'm
going to get a job and stick to it till hell freezes over.
Then I'll go tramping again."

And, such is the irony of fate, next day, when the
wreck ahead was cleared, the Swede and I pulled out of
Evanston in the ice-boxes of an "orange special," a
fast freight laden with fruit from sunny California.
Of course, the ice-boxes were empty on account of the
cold weather, but that didn't make them any warmer
for us. We entered them through hatchways in the
top of the car; the boxes were constructed of gal-
vanized iron, and in that biting weather were not
pleasant to the touch. We lay there, shivered and
shook, and with chattering teeth held a council wherein

138 THE ROAD

we decided that we'd stay by the ice-boxes day and
night till we got out of the inhospitable plateau region
and down into the Mississippi Valley.

But we must eat, and we decided that at the next
division we would throw our feet for grub and make
a rush back to our ice-boxes. We arrived in the town
of Green River late in the afternoon, but too early for
supper. Before meal-time is the worst time for "bat-
tering" back-doors; but we put on our nerve, swung
off the side-ladders as the freight pulled into the yards,
and made a run for the houses. We were quickly
separated ; but we had agreed to meet in the ice-boxes.
I had bad luck at first ; but in the end, with a couple
of "hand-outs" poked into my shirt, I chased for the
train. It was pulling out and going fast. The par-
ticular refrigerator-car in which we were to meet
had already gone by, and half a dozen cars down
the train from it I swung on to the side-ladders, went
up on top hurriedly, and dropped down into an
ice-box.

But a shack had seen me from the caboose, and at
the next stop a few miles farther on, Rock Springs, the
shack stuck his head into my box and said: "Hit the
grit, you son of a toad! Hit the grit!" Also he
grabbed me by the heels and dragged me out. I hit

Grabbed me by the heels and dragged me out.

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 139

the grit all right, and the orange special and the Swede
rolled on without me.

Snow was beginning to fall. A cold night was com-
ing on. After dark I hunted around in the railroad
yards until I found an empty refrigerator car. In I
climbed — not into the ice-boxes, but into the car
itself. I swung the heavy doors shut, and their edges,
covered with strips of rubber, sealed the car air-tight.
The walls were thick. There was no way for the out-
side cold to get in. But the inside was just as cold as
the outside. How to raise the temperature was the
problem. But trust a "prcfesh" for that. Out of
my pockets I dug up three or four newspapers. These
I burned, one at a time, on the floor of the car. The
smoke rose to the top. Not a bit of the heat could
escape, and, comfortable and warm, I passed a beau-
tiful night. I didn't wake up once.

In the morning it was still snowing. While throwing
my feet for breakfast, I missed an east-bound freight.
Later in the day I nailed two other freights and was
ditched from both of them. All afternoon no east-
bound trains went by. The snow was falling thicker
than ever, but at twilight I rode out on the first
blind of the overland. As I swung aboard the
blind from one side, somebody swung aboard from

140 THE ROAD

the other. It was the boy who had run away from
Oregon.

Now the first blind of a fast train in a driving snow-
storm is no summer picnic. The wind goes right
through one, strikes the front of the car, and comes
back again. At the first stop, darkness having come
on, I went forward and interviewed the fireman. I
offered to "shove" coal to the end of his run, which
was Rawlins, and my offer was accepted. My work
was out on the tender, in the snow, breaking the lumps
of coal with a sledge and shovelling it forward to him
in the cab. But as I did not have to work all the time,
I could come into the cab and warm up now and
again.

"Say," I said to the fireman, at my first breathing
spell, "there's a little kid back there on the first blind.
He's pretty cold."

The cabs on the Union Pacific engines are quite
spacious, and we fitted the kid into a warm nook in
front of the high seat of the fireman, where the kid
promptly fell asleep. We arrived at Rawlins at mid-
night. The snow was thicker than ever. Here the
engine was to go into the round-house, being replaced
by a fresh engine. As the train came to a stop, I
dropped off the engine steps plump into the arms of a

I offered to "shove" coal to the end of his run.

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 141

large man in a large overcoat. He began asking me
questions, and I promptly demanded who he was.
Just as promptly he informed me that he was the
sheriff. I drew in my horns and listened and answered.

He began describing the kid who was still asleep in
the cab. I did some quick thinking. Evidently the
family was on the trail of the kid, and the sheriff had
received telegraphed instructions from Oregon. Yes,
I had seen the kid. I had met him first in Ogden.
The date tallied with the sheriff's information. But
the kid was still behind somewhere, I explained, for he
had been ditched from that very overland that night
when it pulled out of Rock Springs. And all the time
I was praying that the kid wouldn't wake up, come
down out of the cab, and put the "kibosh" on me.

The sheriff left me in order to interview the shacks,
but before he left he said : —

"Bo, this town is no place for you. Understand?
You ride this train out, and make no mistake about it.
If I catch you after it's gone . . ."

I assured him that it was not through desire that I was
in his town ; that the only reason I was there was that
the train had stopped there; and that he wouldn't see
me for smoke the way I'd get out of his darn town.

While he went to interview the shacks, I jumped back

142 THE ROAD

into the cab. The kid was awake and rubbing his
eyes. I told him the news and advised him to ride the
engine into the round-house. To cut the story short,
the kid made the same overland out, riding the pilot,
with instructions to make an appeal to the fireman at
the first stop for permission to ride in the engine. As
for myself, I got ditched. The new fireman was young
and not yet lax enough to break the rules of the Com-
pany against having tramps in the engine; so he
turned down my offer to shove coal. I hope the kid
succeeded with him, for all night on the pilot in that
blizzard would have meant death.

Strange to say, I do not at this late day remember a
detail of how I was ditched at Rawlins. I remember
watching the train as it was immediately swallowed
up in the snow-storm, and of heading for a saloon to
warm up. Here was light and warmth. Everything
was in full blast and wide open. Faro, roulette, craps,
and poker tables were running, and some mad cow-
punchers were making the night merry. I had just
succeeded in fraternizing with them and was downing
my first drink at their expense, when a heavy hand de-
scended on my shoulder. I looked around and sighed.
It was the sheriff.

Without a word he led me out into the snow.

It was the sheriff.

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 143

"There's an orange special down there in the yards,"
said he.

"It's a damn cold night," said I.

"It pulls out in ten minutes," said he.

That was all. There was no discussion. And when
that orange special pulled out, I was in the ice-boxes.
I thought my feet would freeze before morning, and the
last twenty miles into Laramie I stood upright in the
hatchway and danced up and down. The snow was
too thick for the shacks to see me, and I didn't care if
they did.

My quarter of a dollar bought me a hot breakfast at
Laramie, and immediately afterward I was on board the
blind baggage of an overland that was climbing to the
pass through the backbone of the Rockies. One does
not ride blind^ baggages in the daytime; but in this
blizzard at the top of the Rocky Mountains I doubted
if the shacks would have the heart to put me off. And
they didn't. They made a practice of coming forward
at every stop to see if I was frozen yet.

At Ames' Monument, at the summit of the Rockies,
• — I forget the altitude, — the shack came forward
for the last time.

"Say, Bo," he said, "you see that freight side-
tracked over there to let us go by?"

144 THE ROAD

I saw. It was on the next track, six feet away.
A few feet more in that storm and I could not have
seen it.

"Well, the 'after-push' of Kelly's Army is in one of
them cars. They've got two feet of straw under
them, and there's so many of them that they keep the
car warm."

His advice was good, and I followed it, prepared,
however, if it was a "con game" the shack had given
me, to take the blind as the overland pulled out. But
it was straight goods. I found the car — a big refrigera-
tor car with the leeward door wide open for ventilation.
Up I climbed and in. I stepped on a man's leg, next
on some other man's arm. The light was dim, and all
I could make out was arms and legs and bodies inex-
tricably confused. Never was there such a tangle of
humanity. They were all lying in the straw, and over,
and under, and around one another. Eighty-four
husky hoboes take up a lot of room when they are
stretched out. The men I stepped on were resentful.
Their bodies heaved under me like the waves of the sea,
and imparted an involuntary forward movement to
me. I could not find any straw to step upon, so I
stepped upon more men. The resentment increased,
so did my forward movement. I lost my footing and

I found the car — with the leeward door open for ventilation.

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 145

sat down with sharp abruptness. Unfortunately, it
was- on a man's head. The next moment he had
risen on his hands and knees in wrath, and I was flying
through the air. What goes up must come down, and
I came down on another man's head.

What happened after that is very vague in my
memory. It was hke going through a threshing-
machine. I was bandied about from one end of the car
to the other. Those eighty-four hoboes winnowed
me out till what little was left of me, by some miracle,
found a bit of straw to rest upon. I was initiated, and
into a jolly crowd. All the rest of that day we rode
through the blizzard, and to while the time away it
was decided that each man was to tell a story. It
was stipulated that each story must be a good one, and,
furthermore, that it must be a story no one had ever
heard before. The penalty for failure was the thresh-
ing-machine. Nobody failed. And I want to say right
here that never in my life have I sat at so marvellous a
story-telling debauch. Here were eighty-four men from
all the world — I made eighty-five; and each man told
a masterpiece. It had to be, for it was either master-
piece or threshing-machine.

Late in the afternoon we arrived in Cheyenne. The
blizzard was at its height, and though the last meal of

146 THE ROAD

all of US had been breakfast, no man cared to throw
his feet for supper. All night we rolled on through the
storm, and next day found us down on the sweet
plains of Nebraska and still rolling. We were out of
the storm and the mountains. The blessed sun was
shining over a smiling land, and we had eaten nothing
for twenty-four hours. We found out that the freight
would arrive about noon at a town, if I remember right,
that was called Grand Island.

We took up a collection and sent a telegram to the
authorities of that town. The text of the message was
that eighty-five healthy, hungry hoboes would arrive
about noon and that it would be a good idea to have
dinner ready for them. The authorities of Grand Island
had two courses open to them. They could feed us, or
they could throw us in jail. In the latter event they'd
have to feed us anyway, and they decided wisely that
one meal would be the cheaper way.

When the freight rolled into Grand Island at noon,
we were sitting on the tops of the cars and dangling our
legs in the sunshine. All the police in the burg were
on the reception committee. They marched us in
squads to the various hotels and restaurants, where
dinners were spread for us. We had been thirty-six
hours without food, and we didn't have to be taught

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 147

what to do. After that we were marched back to the
railroad station. The pohce had thoughtfully com-
pelled the freight to wait for us. She pulled out slowly,
and the eighty-five of us, strung out along the track,
swarmed up the side-ladders. We "captured" the
train.

We had no supper that evening — at least the "push"
didn't, but I did. Just at supper time, as the freight
was pulhng out of a small town, a man climbed into the
car where I was playing pedro with three other stiffs.
The man's shirt was bulging suspiciously. In his
hand he carried a battered quart-measure from which
arose steam. I smelled "Java." I turned my cards
over to one of the stiffs who was looking on, and excused
myself. Then, in the other end of the car, pursued
by envious glances, I sat down with the man who had
climbed aboard and shared his "Java" and the hand-
outs that had bulged his shirt. It was the Swede.

At about ten o'clock in the evening, we arrived at
Omaha.

"Let's shake the push," said the Swede to me.

"Sure," said I.

As the freight pulled into Omaha, we made ready to
do so. But the people of Omaha were also ready.
The Swede and I hung upon the side-ladders, ready

148 THE ROAD

to drop off. But the freight did not stop. Further-
more, long rows of policemen, their brass buttons and
stars glittering in the electric lights, were lined up on
each side of the track. The Swede and I knew what
would happen to us if we ever dropped off into their
arms. We stuck by the side-ladders, and the train
rolled on across the Missouri River to Council Bluffs.

"General" Kelly, with an army of two thousand
hoboes, lay in camp at Chautauqua Park, several miles
away. The after-push we were with was General
Kelly's rearguard, and, detraining at Council Bluffs,
it started to march to camp. The night had turned
cold, and heavy wind-squalls, accompanied by rain,
were chilling and wetting us. Many police were guard-
ing us and herding us to the camp. The Swede and I
watched our chance and made a successful get-away.

The rain began coming down in torrents, and in
the darkness, unable to see our hands in front of our
faces, like a pair of blind men we fumbled about for
shelter. Our instinct served us, for in no time we
stumbled upon a saloon — not a saloon that was open
and doing business, not merely a saloon that was closed
for the night, and not even a saloon with a permanent
address, but a saloon propped up on big timbers, with
rollers underneath, that was being moved from some-

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 149

where to somewhere. The doors were locked. A
squall of wind and rain drove down upon us. We did
not hesitate. Smash went the door, and in we went.

I have made some tough camps in my time, "carried
the banner" in infernal metropolises, bedded in pools
of water, slept in the snow under two blankets when
the spirit thermometer registered seventy-four de-
grees below zero (which is a mere trifle of one hundred
and six degrees of frost) ; but I want to say right here
that never did I make a tougher camp, pass a more
miserable night, than that night I passed with the
Swede in the itinerant saloon at Council Bluffs. In the
first place, the building, perched up as it was in the air,
had exposed a multitude of openings in the floor through
which the wind whistled. In the second place, the
bar was empty; there was no bottled fire-water with
which we could warm ourselves and forget our misery.
We had no blankets, and in our wet clothes, wet to the
skin, we tried to sleep. I rolled under the bar, and the
Swede rolled under the table. The holes and crevices
in the floor made it impossible, and at the end of half
an hour I crawled up on top the bar. A little later
the Swede crawled up on top his table.

And there we shivered and prayed for daylight.
I know, for one, that I shivered until I could shiver no

150 THE ROAD

more, till the shivering muscles exhausted themselves
and merely ached horribly. The Swede moaned and
groaned, and every little while, through chattering
teeth, he muttered, "Never again; never again."
He muttered this phrase repeatedly, ceaselessly, a
thousand times; and when he dozed, he went on mut-
tering it in his sleep.

At the first gray of dawn we left our house of pain,
and outside, found ourselves in a mist, dense and chill.
We stumbled on till we came to the railroad track.
I was going back to Omaha to throw my feet for break-
fast; my companion was going on to Chicago. The
moment for parting had come. Our palsied hands
went out to each other. We were both shivering.
When we tried to speak, our teeth chattered us back
into silence. We stood alone, shut off from the world ;
all that we could see was a short length of railroad
track, both ends of which were lost in the driving mist.
We stared dumbly at each other, our clasped hands
shaking sympathetically. The Swede's face was
blue with the cold, and I know mine must have been.

"Never again what?" I managed to articulate.

Speech strove for utterance in the Swede's throat;
then, faint and distant, in a thin whisper from the
very bottom of his frozen soul, came the words : —

HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 151

"Never again a hobo."

He paused, and, as he went on again, his voice gath-
ered strength and huskiness as it affirmed his will.

"Never again a hobo. I'm going to get a job.
You'd better do the same. Nights hke this make
rheumatism."

He wrung my hand.

"Good-by, Bo," said he.

"Good-by, Bo," said I.

The next we were swallowed up from each other by
the mist. It was our final passing. But here's to you,
Mr. Swede, wherever you are. I hope you got that
job.

ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS

Every once in a while, in newspapers, magazines,
and biographical dictionaries, I run upon sketches of
my life, wherein, delicately phrased, I learn that it was
in order to study sociology that I became a tramp.-
This is very nice and thoughtful of the biographers,
but it is inaccurate. I became a tramp — well,
because of the life that was in me, of the wander-
lust in my blood that would not let me rest. Soci-
ology was merely incidental; it came afterward, in
the same manner that a wet skin follows a duck-
ing. I went on "The Road" because I couldn't
keep away from it; because I hadn't the price of the
railroad fare in my jeans ; because I was so made that
I couldn't work all my life on "one same shift"; be-
cause — well, just because it was easier to than not to.

It happened in my own town, in Oakland, when I

was sixteen. At that time I had attained a dizzy

reputation in my chosen circle of adventurers, by whom

I was known as the Prince of the Oyster Pirates.

It is true, those immediately outside my circle, such

152

ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS 153

as honest bay-sailors, longshoremen, yachtsmen, and
the legal owners of the oysters, called me "tough,"
"hoodlum," "smoudge," "thief," "robber," and va-
rious other not nice things — all of which was com-
plimentary and but served to increase the dizziness of
the high place in which I sat. At that time I had not
read "Paradise Lost," and later, when I read Mil-
ton's "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,"
I was fully convinced that great minds run in the
same channels.

It was at this time that the fortuitous concatena-
tion of events sent me upon my first adventure on
The Road. It happened that there was nothing doing
in oysters just then; that at Benicia, forty miles away,
I had some^ blankets I wanted to get; and that at
Port Costa, several miles from Benicia, a stolen boat
lay at anchor in charge of the constable. Now this
boat was owned by a friend of mine, by name Dinny
McCrea. It had been stolen and left at Port Costa
by Whiskey Bob, another friend of mine. (Poor
Whiskey Bob ! Only last winter his body was picked
up on the beach shot full of holes by nobody knows
whom.) I had come down from "up river" some time
before, and reported to Dinny McCrea the whereabouts
of his boat; and Dinny McCrea had promptly offered

154 THE ROAD

ten dollars to me if I should bring it down to Oakland
to him.

Time was heavy on my hands. I sat on the dock
and talked it over with Nickey the Greek, another
idle oyster pirate. "Let's go," said I, and Nickey
was willing. He was "broke." I possessed fifty
cents and a small skiff. The former I invested and
loaded into the latter in the form of crackers, canned
corned beef, and a ten-cent bottle of French mustard.
(We were keen on French mustard in those days.)
Then, late in the afternoon, we hoisted our small
spritsail and started. We sailed all night, and next
morning, on the first of a glorious flood-tide, a fair
wind behind us, we came booming up the Carquinez
Straits to Port Costa. There lay the stolen boat, not
twenty-five feet from the wharf. We ran alongside
and doused our little spritsail. I sent Nickey for-
ward to lift the anchor, while I began casting off the
gaskets.

A man ran out on the wharf and hailed us. It
was the constable. It suddenly came to me that I
had neglected to get a written authorization from
Dinny McCrea to take possession of his boat. Also,
I knew that constable wanted to charge at least twenty-
five dollars in fees for capturing the boat from Whiskey

ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS 15S

Bob and subsequently taking care of it. And my
last fifty cents had been blown in for corned beef and
French mustard, and the reward was only ten dollars
anyway. I shot a glance forward to Nickey. He had
the anchor up-and-down and was straining at it.
"Break her out," I whispered to him, and turned and
shouted back to the constable. The result was that
he and I were talking at the same time, our spoken
thoughts colliding in mid-air and making gibberish.

The constable grew more imperative, and perforce
I had to listen. Nickey was heaving on the anchor
till I thought he'd burst a blood-vessel. When the
constable got done with his threats and warnings,
I asked him who he was. The time he lost in telling
me enabled Nickey to break out the anchor. I was
doing some quick calculating. At the feet of the con-
stable a ladder ran down the dock to the water, and
to the ladder was moored a skiff. The oars were in
it. But it was padlocked. I gambled everything on
that padlock. I felt the breeze on my cheek, saw
the surge of the tide, looked at the remaining gaskets
that confined the sail, ran my eyes up the halyards to
the blocks and knew that all was clear, and then
threw off all dissimulation.

"In with her!" I shouted to Nickey, and sprang

156 THE ROAD

to the gaskets, casting them loose and thanking my
stars that Whiskey Bob had tied them in square-knots
instead of "grannies."

The constable had slid down the ladder and was
fumbling with a key at the padlock. The anchor
came aboard and the last gasket was loosed at the
same instant that the constable freed the skiff and
jumped to the oars.

"Peak-halyards!" I commanded my crew, at the
same time swinging on to the throat-halyards. Up
came the sail on the run. I belayed and ran aft to
the tiller.

"Stretch her!" I shouted to Nickey at the peak.
The constable was just reaching for our stern. A
puff of wind caught us, and we shot away. It was
great. If I'd had a black flag, I know I'd have run
it up in triumph. The constable stood up in the
skiff, and paled the glory of the day with the vivid-
ness of his language. Also, he wailed for a gun. You
see, that was another gamble we had taken.

An)rway, we weren't stealing the boat. It wasn't
the constable's. We were merely stealing his fees,
which was his particular form of graft. And we
weren't stealing the fees for ourselves, either ; we were
steahng them for my friend, Dinny McCrea.

■XI

c

o

ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS 157

Benicia was made in a few minutes, and a few
minutes later my blankets were aboard. _ I shifted
the boat down to the far end of Steamboat Wharf,
from which point of vantage we could see anybody
coming after us. There was no telling. Maybe
the Port Costa constable would telephone to the Benicia
constable. Nickey and I held a council of war. We
lay on deck in the warm sun, the fresh breeze on our
cheeks, the flood-tide rippling and swirling past.
It was impossible to start back to Oakland till after-
noon, when the ebb would begin to run. But we
figured that the constable would have an eye out on
the Carquinez Straits when the ebb started, and that
nothing remained for us but to wait for the following
ebb, at two o'clock next morning, when we could
slip by Cerberus in the darkness.

So we lay on deck, smoked cigarettes, and were glad
that we were alive. I spat over the side and gauged
the speed of the current.

"With this wind, we could run this flood clear to
Rio Vista," I said.

"And it's fruit-time on the river," said Nickey.

"And low water on the river," said I. "It's the best
time of the year to make Sacramento."

We sat up and looked at each other. The glorious

158 THE ROAD

west wind was pouring over us like wine. We both
spat over the side and gauged the current. Now I
contend that it was all the fault of that flood-tide and
fair wind. They appealed to our sailor instinct. If it
had not been for them, the whole chain of events that
was to put me upon The Road would have broken down.

We said no word, but cast off our moorings and
hoisted sail. Our adventures up the Sacramento
River are no part of this narrative. We subsequently
made the city of Sacramento and tied up at a wharf.
The water was fine, and we spent most of our time
in swimming. On the sand-bar above the railroad
bridge we fell in with a bunch of boys likewise in swim-
ming. Between swims we lay on the bank and talked.
They talked differently from the fellows I had been
used to herding with. It was a new vernacular.
They were road-kids, and with every word they uttered
the lure of The Road laid hold of me more imperiously.

"When I was down in Alabama," one kid would
begin ; or, another, " Coming up on the C. & A. from
K.C."; whereat, a third kid, "On the C. & A. there
ain't no steps to the 'blinds.'" And I would he si-
lently in the sand and listen. "It was at a little town
in Ohio on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern,"
a kid would start ; and another, "Ever ride the Cannon-

ROAD KIDS AND GAY-CATS 159

ball on the Wabash?"; and yet another, "Nope,
but I've been on the White Mail out of Chicago."
"Talk about railroadin' ^ — wait till you hit the Penn-
sylvania, four tracks, no water tanks, take water on
the fly, that's goin' some." "The Northern Pacific's
a bad road now." "Salinas is on the 'hog,' the 'bulls'
is 'horstile.'" "I got 'pinched' at El Paso, along
with Moke Kid." "Talkin' of 'poke-outs,' wait till
you hit the French country out of Montreal — not a
word of English — you say, 'Mongee, Madame, mongee,
no spika da French,' an' rub your stomach an' look
hungry, an' she gives you a slice of sow-belly an' a
chunk of dry 'punk.'"

And I continued to lie in the sand and listen. These
wanderers made my oyster-piracy look like thirty
cents. A new world was calling to me in every word
that was spoken — a world of rods and gunnels, blind
baggages and "side-door Pullmans," "bulls " and
"shacks," "floppings" and "chewin's," "pinches"
and "get-aways," "strong arms" and "bindle-stiffs,"
"punks" and "profesh." And it all spelled Adven-
ture. Very well; I would tackle this new world.
I "lined" myself up alongside those road-kids. I was
just as strong as any of them, just as quick, just as
nervy, and my brain was just as good.

l6o THE ROAD

After the swim, as evening came on, they dressed
and went up town. I went along. The kids began
"battering" the "main-stem" for "hght pieces," or,
in other words, begging for money on the main street.
I had never begged in my Hfe, and this was the hardest
thing for me to stomach when I first went on The
Road. I had absurd notions about begging. My
philosophy, up to that time, was that it was finer to
steal than to beg; and that robbery was finer still
because the risk and the penalty were proportionately
greater. As an oyster pirate I had already earned
convictions at the hands of justice, which, if I had
tried to serve them, would have required a thousand
years in state's prison. To rob was manly; to beg
was sordid and despicable. But I developed in the
days to come all right, all right, till I came to look upon
begging as a joyous prank, a game of wits, a nerve-
exerciser.

That first night, however, I couldn't rise to it; and
the result was that when the kids were ready to go to
a restaurant and eat, I wasn't. I was broke. Meeny
Kid, I think it was, gave me the price, and we all ate
together. But while I ate, I meditated. The receiver,
it was said, was as bad as the thief; Meeny Kid had
done the begging, and I was profiting by it. I de-

ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS i6l

cided that the receiver was a whole lot worse than
the thief, and that it shouldn't happen again. And
it didn't. I turned out next day and threw my feet
as well as the next one.

Nickey the Greek's ambition didn't run to The Road.
He was not a success at throwing his feet, and he
stowed away one night on a barge and went down
river to San Francisco. I met him, only a week ago,
at a pugilistic carnival. He has progressed. He sat
in a place of honor at the ring-side. He is now a
manager of prize-fighters and proud of it. In fact,
in a small way, in local sportdom, he is quite a shining
light.

"No kid is a road -kid until he has gone over 'the
hill'" — such was the law of The Road I heard ex-
pounded in Sacramento. All right, I'd go over the
hill and matriculate. "The hill," by the way, was the
Sierra Nevadas. The whole gang was going over the
hill on a jaunt, and of course I'd go along. It was
French Kid's first adventure on The Road. He had
just run away from his people in San Francisco. It
was up to him and me to deliver the goods. In pass-
ing, I may remark that my old title of "Prince" had
vanished. I had received my "monica." I was
now "Sailor Kid," later to be known as " 'Frisco Kid,"

1 62 THE ROAD

when I had put the Rockies between me and my
native state.

At I0.20 P.M. the Central Pacitic overland pulled
out of the depot at Sacramento for the East — that
particular item of time-table is indelibly engraved
on my memory. There were about a dozen in our
gang, and we strung out in the darkness ahead of the
train ready to take her out. All the local road-kids
that we knew came down to see us off — also, to "ditch"
us if they could. That was their idea of a joke, and
there were only about forty of them to carry it out.
Their ring-leader was a crackerjack road-kid named
Bob. Sacramento was his home town, but he'd
hit The Road pretty well everywhere over the whole
country. He took French Kid and me aside and
gave us advice something hke this: "We're goin' to
try an' ditch your bunch, see? Youse two are weak.
The rest of the push can take care of itself. So, as
soon as youse two nail a blind, deck her. An' stay
on the decks till youse pass Roseville Junction, at
which burg the constables are horstile, sloughin'
in everybody on sight."

The engine whistled and the overland pulled out.
There were three blinds on her — room for all of us.
The dozen of us who were trying to make her out

ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS 163

would have preferred to slip aboard quietly; but our
forty friends crowded on with the most amazing and
shameless publicity and advertisement. Following
Bob's advice, I immediately "decked her," that is,
climbed up on top of the roof of one of the mail-cars.
There I lay down, my heart jumping a few extra
beats, and listened to the fun. The whole train crew
was forward, and the ditching went on fast and furious.
After the train had run half a mile, it stopped, and the
crew came forward again and ditched the survivors.
I, alone, had made the train out.

Back at the depot, about him two or three of the
push that had witnessed the accident, lay French
Kid with both legs off. French Kid had slipped or
stumbled — that was all, and the wheels had done
the rest. Such was my initiation to The Road. It
was two years afterward when I next saw French Kid
and examined his "stumps." This was an act of
courtesy. "Cripples" always hke to have their stumps
examined. One of the entertaining sights on The
Road is to witness the meeting of two cripples. Their
common disability is a fruitful source of conversation;
and they tell how it happened, describe what they
know of the amputation, pass critical judgment on
their own and each other's surgeons, and wind up

1 64 THE ROAD

by withdrawing to one side, taking off bandages and
wrappings, and comparing stumps.

But it was not until several days later, over in Ne-
vada, when the push caught up with me, that I learned
of French Kid's accident. The push itself arrived in
bad condition. It had gone through a train-wreck in
the snow-sheds ; Happy Joe was on crutches with two
mashed legs, and the rest were nursing skins and bruises.

In the meantime, I lay on the roof of the mail-car,
trying to remember whether Roseville Junction, against
which burg Bob had warned me, was the first stop
or the second stop. To make sure, I delayed descend-
ing to the platform of the blind until after the second
stop. And then I didn't descend. I was new to the
game, and I felt safer where I was. But I never
told the push that I held down the decks the whole
night, clear across the Sierras, through snow-sheds
and tunnels, and down to Truckee on the other side,
where I arrived at seven in the morning. Such a
thing was disgraceful, and I'd have been a common
laughing-stock. This is the first time I have con-
fessed the truth about that first ride over the hill. As
for the push, it decided that I was all right, and when
I came back over the hill to Sacramento, I was a full-
fledged road-kid.

^

ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS 165

Yet I had much to learn. Bob was my mentor,
and he was all right. I remember one evening (it
was fair-time in Sacramento, and we were knocking
about and having a good time) when I lost my hat
in a fight. There was I bare-headed in the street,
and it was Bob to the rescue. He took me to one side
from the push and told me what to do. I was a bit
timid of his advice. I had just come out of jail, where
I had been three days, and I knew that if the police
"pinched" me again, I'd get good and "soaked."
On the other hand, I couldn't show the white feather.
I'd been over the hill, I was running full-fledged with
the push, and it was up to me to deliver the goods.
So I accepted Bob's advice, and he came along with
me to see that I did it up brown.

We took our position on K Street, on the corner,
I think, of Fifth. It was early in the evening and
the street was crowded. Bob studied the head-gear
of every Chinaman that passed. I used to wonder
how the road-kids all managed to wear "five-dollar
Stetson stiff -rims," and now I knew. They got them,
the way I was going to get mine, from the Chinese.
I was nervous — there were so many people about;
but Bob was cool as an iceberg. Several times, when
I started forward toward a Chinaman, all nerved and

1 66 THE ROAD

keyed up, Bob dragged me back. He wanted me
to get a good hat, and one that fitted. Now a hat came
by that was the right size but not new; and, after a
dozen impossible hats, along would come one that
was new but not the right size. And when one did
come by that was new and the right size, the rim was
too large or not large enough. My, Bob was finicky.
I was so wrought up that I'd have snatched any kind
of a head-covering.

At last came the hat, the one hat in Sacramento
for me. I knew it was a winner as soon as I looked
at it. I glanced at Bob. He sent a sweeping look-
about for police, then nodded his head. I lifted the
hat from the Chinaman's head and pulled it down on
my own. It was a perfect fit. Then I started. I
heard Bob crying out, and I caught a glimpse of him
blocking the irate Mongolian and tripping him up.
I ran on. I turned up the next corner, and around
the next. This street was not so crowded as K, and
I walked along in quietude, catching my breath and
congratulating myself upon my hat and my get-away.

And then, suddenly, around the corner at my back,
came the bare-headed Chinaman. With him were
a couple more Chinamen, and at their heels were half
a dozen men and boys. I sprinted to the next corner.

ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS 167

crossed the street, and rounded the following corner.
I decided that I had surely played him out, and I
dropped into a walk again. But around the corner
at my heels came that persistent Mongolian. It was
the old story of the hare and the tortoise. He could
not run so fast as I, but he stayed with it, plodding
along at a shambling and deceptive trot, and wasting
much good breath in noisy imprecations. He called
all Sacramento to witness the dishonor that had been
done him, and a goodly portion of Sacramento heard
and flocked at his heels. And I ran on like the hare,
and ever that persistent Mongolian, with the increas-
ing rabble, overhauled me. But finally, when a police-
man had joined his following, I let out all my links.
I twisted and turned, and I swear I ran at least twenty
blocks on the straight away. And I never saw that
Chinaman again. The hat was a dandy, a brand-new
Stetson, just out of the shop, and it was the envy of
the whole push. Furthermore, it was the symbol
that I had delivered the goods. I wore it for over a
year.

Road -kids are nice little chaps — when you get
them alone and they are telling you "how it hap-
pened"; but take my word for it, watch out for them
when they run in pack. Then they are wolves, and

1 68 THE ROAD

like wolves they are capable of dragging down the
strongest man. At such times they are not cowardly.
They will fling themselves upon a man and hold on
with every ounce of strength in their wiry bodies, till
he is thrown and helpless. More than once have
I seen them do it, and I know whereof I speak. Their
motive is usually robbery. And watch out for the
"strong arm." Every kid in the push I travelled with
was expert at it. Even French Kid mastered it before
he lost his legs.

I have strong upon me now a vision of what I once
saw in "The Willows." The Willows was a clump
of trees in a waste piece of land near the railway depot
and not more than five minutes walk from the heart
of Sacramento. It is night-time, and the scene is
illumined by the thin light of stars. I see a husky
laborer in the midst of a pack of road-kids. He is
infuriated and cursing them, not a bit afraid, confi-
dent of his own strength. He weighs about one hun-
dred and eighty pounds, and his muscles are hard;
but he doesn't know what he is up against. The
kids are snarling. It is not pretty. They make a
rush from all sides, and he lashes out and whirls.
Barber Kid is standing beside me. As the man whirls.
Barber Kid leaps forward and does the trick. Into

ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS 169

the man's back goes his knee ; around the man's neck,
from behind, passes his right hand, the bone of the
wrist pressing against the jugular vein. Barber Kid
throws his whole weight backward. It is a powerful
leverage. Besides, the man's wind has been shut
oS. It is the strong arm.

The man resists, but he is already practically help-
less. The road-kids are upon him from every side,
clinging to arms and legs and body, and like a wolf
at the throat of a moose Barber Kid hangs on and
drags backward. Over the man goes, and down under
the heap. Barber Kid changes the position of his
• own body, but never lets go. While some of the kids
are "going through" the victim, others are holding
his legs so that he cannot kick and thresh about. They
improve the opportunity by taking off the man's shoes.
As for him, he has given in. He is beaten. Also,
what of the strong arm at his throat, he is short of wind.
He is making ugly choking noises, and the kids hiirry.
They really don't want to kill him. All is done. At
a word all holds are released at once, and the kids scat-
ter, one of them lugging the shoes — he knows where
he can get half a dollar for them. The man sits up
and looks about him, dazed and helpless. Even if
he wanted to, bare-footed pursuit in the darkness

170 THE ROAD

would be hopeless. I linger a moment and watch
him. He is feeling at his throat, making dry, hawk-
ing noises, and jerking his head in a quaint way as
though to assure himself that the neck is not dislocated.
Then I slip away to join the push, and see that man
no more — though I shall always see him, sitting there
in the starlight, somewhat dazed, a bit frightened,
greatly dishevelled, and making quaint jerking move-
ments of head and neck.

Drunken men are the especial prey of the road-kids.
Robbing a drunken man they call "rolling a stiff";
and wherever they are, they are on the constant look-
out for drunks. The drunk is their particular meat,
as the fly is the particular meat of the spider. The
rolling of a stiff is ofttimes an amusing sight, especially
when the stiff is helpless and when interference is
unlikely. At the first swoop the stiff's money and
jewellery go. Then the kids sit around their victim
in a sort of pow-wow. A kid generates a fancy for the
stiff's necktie. Off it comes. Another kid is after
underclothes. Off they come, and a knife quickly
abbreviates arms and legs. Friendly hoboes may be
called in to take the coat and trousers, which are too
large for the kids. And in the end they depart, leav-
ing beside the stiff the heap of their discarded rags.

ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS 171

Another vision comes to me. It is a dark night.
My push is coming along the sidewalk in the suburbs.
Ahead of us, under an electric light, a man crosses
the street diagonally. There is something tentative
and desultory in his walk. The kids scent the game
on the instant. The man is drunk. He blunders
across the opposite sidewalk and is lost in the darkness
as he takes a short-cut through a vacant lot. No
hunting cry is raised, but the pack flings itself forward
in quick pursuit. In the middle of the vacant lot it
comes upon him. But what is this ? — snarling and
strange forms, small and dim and menacing, are be-
tween the pack and its prey. It is another pack of
road-kids, and in the hostile pause we learn that it
is their meat, that they have been trailing it a dozen
blocks and more and that we are butting in. But it
is the world primeval. These wolves are baby wolves.
(As a matter of fact, I don't think one of them was
over twelve or thirteen years of age. I met some of
them afterward, and learned that they had just arrived
that day over the hill, and that they hailed from Denver
and Salt Lake City.) Our pack flings forward. The
baby wolves squeal and screech and fight like little
demons. All about the drunken man rages the strug-
gle for the possession of him. Down he goes in the

172 THE ROAD

thick of it, and the combat rages over his body after
the fashion of the Greeks and Trojans over the body
and armor of a fallen hero. Amid cries and tears and
wailings the baby wolves are dispossessed, and my
pack rolls the stiff. But always I remember the poor
stiff and his befuddled amazement at the abrupt erup-
tion of battle in the vacant lot. I see him now, dim
in the darkness, titubating in stupid wonder, good-
naturedly essaying the role of peacemaker in that mul-
titudinous scrap the significance of which he did not
understand, and the really hurt expression on his face
when he, unoffending he, was clutched at by many
hands and dragged down in the thick of the press.

"Bindle-stiffs" are favorite prey of the road-kids.
A bindle-stiff is a working tramp. He takes his name
from the roll of blankets he carries, which is known
as a "bindle." Because he does work, a bindle-stiff
is expected usually to have some small change about
him, and it is after that small change that the road-
kids go. The best hunting-ground for bindle-stiffs
is in the sheds, barns, lumber-yards, railroad-yards,
etc., on the edges of a city, and the time for hunting
is the night, when the bindle-stiff seeks these places
to roll up in his blankets and sleep.

"Gay-cats" also come to grief at the hands of the

Drunken men are the especial prey of the road-kids.

ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS i^^

road-kids. In more familiar parlance, gay-cats are
short-horns, chechaquos, new chums, or tenderfeet.
A gay-cat is a newcomer on The Road who is man-
grown, or, at least, youth-grown. A boy on The
Road, on the other hand, no matter how green he is,
is never a gay-cat; he is a road-kid or a "punk," and
if he travels with a "profesh," he is known possessively
as a "prushun." I was never a prushun, for I did
not take kindly to possession. I was first a road-kid
and then a profesh. Because I started in young, I
practically skipped my gay-cat apprenticeship. For
a short period, during the time I was exchanging my
'Frisco Kid monica for that of Sailor Jack, I labored
under the suspicion of being a gay-cat. But closer
acquaintance on the part of those that suspected me
quickly disabused their minds, and in a short time I
acquired the unmistakable airs and ear-marks of the
blowed-in-the-glass profesh. And be it known, here
and now, that the profesh are the aristocracy of The
Road. They are the lords and masters, the aggressive
men, the primordial noblemen, the blond beasts so
beloved of Nietzsche.

When I came back over the hill from Nevada, I
found that some river pirate had stolen Dinny McCrea's
boat. (A funny thing at this day is that I cannot

174 THE ROAD

remember what became of the skiff in which Nickey
the Greek and I sailed from Oakland to Port Costa.
I know that the constable didn't get it, and I know that
it didn't go with us up the Sacramento River, and that
is all I do know.) With the loss of Dinny McCrea's
boat, I was pledged to The Road; and when I grew
tired of Sacramento, I said good-by to the push (which,
in its friendly way, tried to ditch me from a freight
as I left town) and started on a passear down the
valley of the San Joaquin. The Road had gripped
me and would not let me go; and later, when I had
voyaged to sea and done one thing and another, I
returned to The Road to make longer flights, to be a
"comet" and a profesh, and to plump into the bath
of sociology that wet me to the skin.

TWO THOUSAND STIFFS

A "stiff" is a tramp. It was once my fortune to
travel a few weeks with a "push" that numbered
two thousand. This was known as "Kelly's Army."
Across the wild and woolly West, clear from Cali-
fornia, General Kelly and his heroes had captured
trains ; but they fell down when they crossed the Mis-
souri and went up against the effete East. The East
hadn't the slightest intention of giving free transpor-
tation to two thousand hoboes. Kelly's Army lay
helplessly for some time at Council Bluffs. The day
I joined it, made desperate by delay, it marched out
to capture a train.

It was quite an imposing sight. General Kelly
sat a magnificent black charger, and with waving
banners, to the martial music of fife and drum corps,
company by company, in two divisions, his two thou-
sand stiffs countermarched before him and hit the
wagon-road to the little burg of Weston, seven miles
away. Being the latest recruit, I was in the last com-
pany, of the last regiment, of the Second Division, and,

175

176 THE ROAD

furthermore, in the last rank of the rear-guard. The
army went into camp at Weston beside the railroad
track — beside the tracks, rather, for two roads went
through : the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, and
the Rock Island.

Our intention was to take the first train out, but
the raikoad officials "coppered" our play — and
won. There was no first train. They tied up the
two lines and stopped running trains. In the mean-
time, while we lay by the dead tracks, the good people
of Omaha and Council Bluffs were bestirring them-
selves. Preparations, were making to form a mob,
capture a train in Council Bluffs, run it down to us,
and make us a present of it. The railroad officials
coppered that play, too. They didn't wait for the
mob. Early in the morning of the second day, an
engine, with a single private car attached, arrived
at the station and side-tracked. At this sign that life
had renewed in the dead roads, the whole army lined
up beside the track.

But never did life renew so monstrously on a dead
railroad as it did on those two roads. From the
west came the whistle of a locomotive. It was coming
in our direction, bound east. We were bound east.
A stir of preparation ran down our ranks. The

TWO THOUSAND STIFFS 177

whistle tooted fast and furiously, and the train thun-
dered at top speed. The hobo didn't live that could
have boarded it. Another locomotive whistled, and
another train came through at top speed, and another,
and another, train after train, train after train, till
toward the last the trains were composed of passenger
coaches, box-cars, fiat-cars, dead engines, cabooses,
mail-cars, wrecking appliances, and all the riff-raff of
worn-out and abandoned rolling-stock that collects
in the yards of great railways. When the yards at
Council Bluffs had been completely cleaned, the
private car and engine went east, and the tracks died
for keeps.

That day went by, and the next, and nothing moved,
and in the meantime, pelted by sleet, and rain, and
hail, the two thousand hoboes lay beside the track.
But that night the good people of Council Bluffs
went the railroad officials one better. A mob formed
in Council Bluffs, crossed the river to Omaha, and
there joined with another mob in a raid on the Union
Pacific yards. First they captured an engine, next
they knocked a train together, and then the united
mobs piled aboard, crossed the Missouri, and ran down
the Rock Island right of way to turn the train over to
us. The railway officials tried to copper this play,

178 THE ROAD

but fell down, to the mortal terror of the section boss
and one member of the section gang at Weston. This
pair, under secret telegraphic orders, tried to wreck
our train-load of sympathizers by tearing up the
track. It happened that we were suspicious and had
our patrols out. Caught red-handed at train-wreck-
ing, and surrounded by twenty hundred infuriated
hoboes, that section-gang boss and assistant prepared
to meet death. I don't remember what saved them,
unless it was the arrival of the train.

It was our turn to fall down, and we did, hard.
In their haste, the two mobs had neglected to make
up a sufficiently long train. There wasn't room for
two thousand hoboes to ride. So the mobs and the
hoboes had a talkfest, fraternized, sang songs, and
parted, the mobs going back on their captured train
to Omaha, the hoboes pulling out next morning on
a hundred-and-forty-mile march to Des Moines. It
was not until Kelly's Army crossed the Missouri that
it began to walk, and after that it never rode again.
It cost the railroads slathers of money, but they were
acting on principle, and they won.

Underwood, Leola, Menden, Avoca, Walnut, Marno,
Atlantic, Wyoto, Anita, Adair, Adam, Casey, Stuart,
Dexter, Carlham, De Soto, Van Meter, Booneville,

TWO THOUSAND STIFFS 179

Commerce, Valley Junction — how the names of the
towns come back to me as I con the map and trace
our route through the fat Iowa country! And the
hospitable Iowa farmer-folk! They turned out with
their wagons and carried our baggage; gave us hot
lunches at noon by the wayside ; mayors of comfortable
little towns made speeches of welcome and hastened
us on our way ; deputations of Httle girls and maidens
came out to meet us, and the good citizens turned
out by hundreds, locked arms, and marched with
us down their main streets. It was circus day when
we came to town, and every day was circus day, for
there were many towns.

In the evenings our camps were invaded by whole
populations. Every company had its campfire, and
around each fire something was doing. The cooks
in my company. Company L, were song-and-dance
artists and contributed most of our entertainment.
In another part of the encampment the glee club
would be singing — one of its star voices was the
"Dentist," drawn from Company L, and we were
mighty proud of him. Also, he pulled teeth for the
whole army, and, since the extractions usually occurred
at meal-time, our digestions were stimulated by va-
riety of incident. The Dentist had no anaesthetics,

l8o THE ROAD

but two or three of us were always on tap to volunteer
to hold down the patient. In addition to the stunts
of the companies and the glee club, church services
were usually held, local preachers officiating, and
always there was a great making of political speeches.
All these things ran neck and neck; it was a full-
blown Midway. A lot of talent can be dug out of
two thousand hoboes. I remember we had a picked
baseball nine, and on Sundays we made a practice of
putting it all over the local nines. Sometimes we
did it twice on Sundays.

Last year, while on a lecturing trip, I rode into Des
Moines in a Pullman — I don't mean a "side-door
Pullman," but the real thing. On the outskirts of
the city I saw the old stove-works, and my heart leaped.
It was there, at the stove-works, a dozen years before,
that the Army lay down and swore a mighty oath that
its feet were sore and that it would walk no more.
We took possession of the stove-works and told Des
Moines that we had come to stay — that we'd walked
in, but we'd be blessed if we'd walk out. Des Moines
was hospitable, but this was too much of a good thing.
Do a little mental arithmetic, gentle reader. Two
thousand hoboes, eating three square meals, make
six thousand meals per day, forty-two thousand meals

TWO THOUSAND STIFFS i8l

per week, or one hundred and sixty-eight thousand
meals per shortest month in the calendar. That's
going some. We had no money. It was up to Des
Moines.

Des Moines was desperate. We lay in camp, made
political speeches, held sacred concerts, pulled teeth,
played baseball and seven-up, and ate our six thou-
sand meals per day, and Des Moines paid for it. Des
Moines pleaded with the raihoads, but they were
obdurate; they had said we shouldn't ride, and that
settled it. To permit us to ride would be to establish
a precedent, and there weren't going to be any prece-
dents. And still we went on eating. That was the
terrifying factor in the situation. We were bound for
Washington, and Des Moines would have had to float
municipal bonds to pay all our railroad fares, even
at special rates, and if we remained much longer, she'd
have to float bonds anyway to feed us.

Then some local genius solved the problem. We
wouldn't walk. Very good. We should ride. From
Des Moines to Keokuk on the Mississippi flowed the
Des Moines River. This particular stretch of river
was three hundred miles long. We could ride on it,
said the local genius ; and, once equipped with floating
stock, we could ride on down the Mississippi to the

1 82 THE ROAD

Ohio, and thence up the Ohio, winding up with a
short portage over the mountains to Washington.

Des Moines took up a subscription. Pubhc-spirited
citizens contributed several thousand dollars. Lum-
ber, rope, nails, and cotton for calking were bought
in large quantities, and on the banks of the Des Moines
was inaugurated a tremendous era of shipbuilding.
Now the Des Moines is a picayune stream, unduly
dignified by the appellation of "river." In our spa-
cious western land it would be called a "creek." The
oldest inhabitants shook their heads and said we couldn't
make it, that there wasn't enough water to float us.
Des Moines didn't care, so long as it got rid of us, and
we were such well-fed optimists that we didn't care
either.

On Wednesday, May 9, 1894, we got under way
and started on our colossal picnic. Des Moines had
got off pretty easily, and she certainly owes a statue
in bronze to the local genius who got her out of her
difficulty. True, Des Moines had to pay for our boats ;
we had eaten sixty-six thousand meals at the stove-
works ; and we took twelve thousand additional meals
along with us in our commissary — as a precaution
against famine in the wilds; but then, think what it
would have meant if we had remained at Des Moines

TWO THOUSAND STIFFS 183

eleven months instead of eleven days. Also, when
we departed, we promised Des Moines we'd come
back if the river failed to float us.

It was all very well having twelve thousand meals
in the commissary, and no doubt the commissary
"ducks" enjoyed them; for the commissary promptly
got lost, and my boat, for one, never saw it again.
The company formation was hopelessly broken up
during the river- trip. In any camp of men there
will always be found a certain percentage of shirks,
of helpless, of just ordinary, and of hustlers. There
were ten men in my boat, and they were the cream of
Company L. Every man was a hustler. For two
reasons I was included in the ten. First, I was as good
a hustler as ever "threw his feet," and next, I was
"Sailor Jack." I understood boats and boating.
The ten of us forgot the remaining forty men of Com-
pany L, and by the time we had missed one meal
we promptly forgot the commissary. We were in-
dependent. We went down the river "on our own,"
husthng our "chewin's," beating every boat in the
fleet, and, alas that I must say it, sometimes taking
possession of the stores the farmer-folk had collected
for the Army.

For a good part of the three hundred miles we were

1 84 THE ROAD

from half a day to a day or so in advance of the Army.
We had managed to get hold of several American
flags. When we approached a small town, or when
we saw a group of farmers gathered on the bank, we
ran up our flags, called ourselves the "advance boat,"
and demanded to know what provisions had been
collected for the Army. We represented the Army,
of course, and the provisions were turned over to us.
But there wasn't anything small about us. We never
took more than we could get away with. But we did
take the cream of everything. For instance, if some
philanthropic farmer had donated several dollars'
worth of tobacco, we took it. So, also, we took butter
and sugar, coffee and canned goods; but when the
stores consisted of sacks of beans and flour, or two
or three slaughtered steers, we resolutely refrained
and went our way, leaving orders to turn such pro-
visions over to the commissary boats whose business
was to follow behind us.

My, but the ten of us did live on the fat of the land !
For a long time General Kelly vainly tried to head us
off. He sent two rowers, in a light, round-bottomed
boat, to overtake us and put a stop to our piratical
careers. They overtook us all right, but they were
two and we were ten. They were empowered by

TWO THOUSAND STIFFS 185

General Kelly to make us prisoners, and they told
us so. When we expressed disinclination to become
prisoners, they hurried ahead to the next town to in-
voke the aid of the authorities. We went ashore im-
mediately and cooked an early supper ; and under the
cloak of darkness we ran by the town and its authorities.

I kept a diary on part of the trip, and as I read it
over now I note one persistently recurring phrase,
namely, "Living fine." We did live fine. We even
disdained to use coffee boiled in water. We made our
coffee out of milk, calling the wonderful beverage, if
I remember rightly, "pale Vienna."

While we were ahead, skimming the cream, and
while the commissary was lost far behind, the main
Army, coming along in the middle, starved. This
was hard on the Army, I'll allow; but then, the ten
of us were individualists. We had initiative and
enterprise. We ardently believed that the grub was
to the man who got there first, the pale Vienna to the
strong. On one stretch the Army went forty-eight
hours without grub; and then it arrived at a small
village of some three hundred inhabitants, the name
of which I do not remember, though I think it was
Red Rock. This town, following the practice of all
towns through which the Army passed, had appointed

l86 THE ROAD

a committee of safety. Counting five to a family,
Red Rock consisted of sixty households. Her com-
mittee of safety was scared stiff by the eruption of two
thousand hungry hoboes who lined their boats two and
three deep along the river bank. General Kelly was
a fair man. He had no intention of working a hard-
ship on the village. He did not expect sixty house-
holds to furnish two thousand meals. Besides, the
Army had its treasure-chest.

But the committee of safety lost its head. "No
encouragement to the invader" was its programme,
and when General Kelly wanted to buy food, the com-
mittee turned him down. It had nothing to sell ; Gen-
eral Kelly's money was "no good" in their burg. And
then General Kelly went into action. The bugles
blew. The Army left the boats and on top of the bank
formed in battle array. The committee was there to
see. General Kelly's speech was brief.

"Boys," he said, "when did you eat last?"

"Day before yesterday," they shouted.

"Are you hungry?"

A mighty affirmation from two thousand throats
shook the atmosphere. Then General Kelly turned
to the committee of safety : —

"You see, gentlemen, the situation. My men have

I was carrying two buckets.

TWO THOUSAND STIFFS 187

eaten nothing in forty-eight hours. If I turn them
loose upon your town, I'll not be responsible for what
happens. They are desperate. I offered to buy
food for them, but you refused to sell. I now with-
draw my offer. Instead, I shall demand. I give you
five minutes to decide. Either kill me six steers and
give me four thousand rations, or I turn the men loose.
Five minutes, gentlemen."

The terrified committee of safety looked at the two
thousand hungry hoboes and collapsed. It didn't
wait the five minutes. It wasn't going to take any
chances. The killing of the steers and the collecting
of the requisition began forthwith, and the Army dined.

And still the ten graceless individualists soared
along ahead and gathered in everything in sight. But
General Kelly fixed us. He sent horsemen down
each bank, warning farmers and townspeople against
us. They did their work thoroughly, all right. The
erstwhile hospitable farmers met us with the icy mit.
Also, they summoned the constables when we tied
up to the bank, and loosed the dogs. I know. Two
of the latter caught me with a barbed-wire fence be-
tween me and the river. I was carrying two buckets
of milk for the pale Vienna. I didn't damage the
fence any; but we drank plebeian coffee boiled with

1 88 THE ROAD

vulgar water, and it was up to me to throw my feet
for another pair of trousers. I wonder, gentle reader,
if you ever essayed hastily to climb a barbed-wire
fence with a bucket of milk in each hand. Ever since
that day I have had a prejudice against barbed wire,
and I have gathered statistics on the subject.

Unable to make an honest living so long as General
Kelly kept his two horsemen ahead of us, we returned
to the Army and raised a revolution. It was a small
affair, but it devastated Company L of the Second
Division. The captain of Company L refused to
recognize us; said we were deserters, and traitors,
and scalawags; and when he drew rations for Com-
pany L from the commissary, he wouldn't give us any.
That captain didn't appreciate us, or he wouldn't
have refused us grub. Promptly we intrigued with
the first lieutenant. He joined us with the ten men
in his boat, and in return we elected him captain of
Company M. The captain of Company L raised a
roar. Down upon us came General Kelly, Colonel
Speed, and Colonel Baker. The twenty of us stood
firm, and our revolution was ratified.

But we never bothered with the commissary. Our
hustlers drew better rations from the farmers. Our
new captain, however, doubted us. He never knew

TWO THOUSAND STIFFS 1 89

when he'd see the ten of us again, once we got under
way in the morning, so he called in a blacksmith to
clinch his captaincy. In the stern of our boat, one on
each side, were driven two heavy eye-bohs of iron.
Correspondingly, on the bow of his boat, were fastened
two huge iron hooks. The boats were brought together,
end on, the hooks dropped into the eye-bolts, and
there we were, hard and fast. We couldn't lose that
captain. But we were irrepressible. Out of our very
manacles we wrought an invincible device that enabled
us to put it all over every other boat in the fleet.

Like all great inventions, this one of ours was acci-
dental. We discovered it the first time we ran on a
snag in a bit of a rapid. The head-boat hung up and
anchored, and the tail-boat swung around in the
current, pivoting the head-boat on the snag. I was at
the stern of the tail-boat, steering. In vain we tried
to shove oS. Then I ordered the men from the head-
boat into the tail-boat. Immediately the head-boat
floated clear, and its men returned into it. After that,
snags, reefs, shoals, and bars had no terrors for us.
The instant the head-boat struck, the men in it leaped
into the tail-boat. Of course, the head-boat floated
over the obstruction and the tail-boat then struck.
Like automatons, the twenty men now in the tail-

igo THE ROAD

boat leaped into the head-boat, and the tail-boat
floated past.

The boats used by the Army were all alike, made by
the mile and sawed off. They were flat-boats, and
their lines were rectangles. Each boat was six feet
wide, ten feet long, and a foot and a half deep. Thus,
when our two boats were hooked together, I sat at
the stern steering a craft twenty feet long, containing
twenty husky hoboes who "spelled" each other at
the oars and paddles, and loaded with blankets, cook-
ing outfit, and our own private commissary.

Still we caused General Kelly trouble. He had called
in his horsemen, and substituted three police-boats
that travelled in the van and allowed no boats to pass
them. The craft containing Company M crowded
the police-boats hard. We could have passed them
easily, but it was against the rules. So we kept
a respectful distance astern and waited. Ahead
we knew was virgin farming country, unbegged and
generous; but we waited. White water was all we
needed, and when we rounded a bend and a rapid
showed up we knew what would happen. Smash !
Police-boat number one goes on a boulder and hangs
up. Bang! Police-boat number two follows suit.
Whop ! Police-boat number three encounters the

TWO THOUSAND STIFFS 191

common fate of all. Of course our boat does the same
things; but one, two, the men are out of the head-
boat and into the tail-boat; one, two, they are out of
the tail-boat and into the head-boat; and one, two,
the men who belong in the tail-boat are back in it and
we are dashing on. "Stop! you blankety-blank-
blanks!" shriek the police-boats. "How can we?
— blank the blankety-blank river, anyway!" we wail
plaintively as we surge past, caught in that remorse-
less current that sweeps us on out of sight and into
the hospitable farmer-country that replenishes our
private commissary with the cream of its contributions.
Again we drink pale Vienna and realize that the grub
is to the man who gets there.

Poor General Kelly ! He devised another scheme.
The whole fleet started ahead of us. Company M
of the Second Division started in its proper place in
the line, which was last. And it took us only one day
to put the "kibosh " on that particular scheme. Twenty-
five miles of bad water lay before us — all rapids,
shoals, bars, and boulders. It was over that stretch
of water that the oldest inhabitants of Des Moines
had shaken their heads. Nearly two hundred boats
entered the bad water ahead of us, and they piled
up in the most astounding manner. We went

192 THE ROAD

through that stranded fleet like hemlock through the
fire. There was no avoiding the boulders, bars, and
snags except by getting out on the bank. We didn't
avoid them. We went right over them, one, two, one,
two, head-boat, tail-boat, head-boat, tail-boat, all
hands back and forth and back again. We camped
that night alone, and loafed in camp all of next day
while the Army patched and repaired its wrecked
boats and straggled up to us.

There was no stopping our cussedness. We rigged
up a mast, piled on the canvas (blankets), and travelled
short hours while the Army worked over-time to keep
us in sight. Then General Kelly had recourse to diplo-
macy. No boat could touch us in the straight-away.
Without discussion, we were the hottest bunch that
ever came down the Des Moines. The ban of the
police-boats was lifted. Colonel Speed was put aboard,
and with this distinguished officer we had the honor
of arriving first at Keokuk on the Mississippi. And
right here I want to say to General Kelly and Colonel
Speed that here's my hand. You were heroes, both
of you, and you were men. And I'm sorry for at least
ten per cent of the trouble that was given you by
the head-boat of Company M.
At Keokuk the whole fleet was lashed together

TWO THOUSAND STIFFS 193

in a huge raft, and, after being wind-bound a day,
a steamboat took us in tow down the Mississippi
to Quincy, lUinois, where we camped across the river
on Goose Island. Here the raft idea was abandoned,
the boats being joined together in groups of four and
decked over. Somebody told me that Quincy was
the richest town of its size in the United States. When
I heard this, I was immediately overcome by an irre-
sistible impulse to throw my feet. No "blowed-in-
the-glass profesh" could possibly pass up such a
promising burg. I crossed the river to Quincy in
a small dug-out; but I came back in a large river-
boat, down to the gunwales with the results of my
thrown feet. Of course I kept all the money I had
collected, though I paid the boat-hire; also I took
my pick of the underwear, socks, cast-off clothes,
shirts, "kicks," and "sky-pieces"; and when Com-
pany M had taken all it wanted there was still a re-
spectable heap that was turned over to Company L.
Alas, I was young and prodigal in those days ! I
told a thousand "stories" to the good people of Quincy,
and every story was "good"; but since I have come
to write for the magazines I have often regretted the
wealth of story, the fecundity of fiction, I lavished
that day in Quincy, Illinois.

194 THE ROAD

It was at Hannibal, Missouri, that the ten invin-
cibles went to pieces. It was not planned. We just
naturally flew apart. The Boiler-Maker and I de-
serted secretly. On the same day Scotty and Davy
made a swift sneak for the Illinois shore ; also McAvoy
and Fish achieved their get-away. This accounts
for six of the ten ; what became of the remaining four
I do not know. As a sample of life on The Road,
I make the following quotation from my diary of the
several days following my desertion.

"Friday, May 25th. Boiler-Maker and I left the
camp on the island. We went ashore on the Illinois
side in a skiff and walked six miles on the C.B. & Q.
to Fell Creek. We had gone six miles out of our way,
but we got on a hand-car and rode six miles to Hull's,
on the Wabash. While there, we met McAvoy, Fish,
Scotty, and Davy, who had also pulled out from the
Army.

"Saturday, May 26th. At 2. 11 a.m. we caught
the Cannon-ball as she slowed up at the crossing.
Scotty and Davy were ditched. The four of us were
ditched at the Bluffs, forty miles farther on. In
the afternoon Fish and McAvoy caught a freight
while Boiler-Maker and I were away getting some-
thing to eat.

TWO THOUSAND STIFFS 1 95

"Sunday, May 27th. At 3.21 a.m. we caught the
Cannon-ball and found Scotty and Davy on the blind.
We were all ditched at daylight at Jacksonville. The
C. & A. runs through here, and we're going to take
that. Boiler-Maker went off, but didn't return.
Guess he caught a freight.

"Monday, May 28th. Boiler-Maker didn't show
up. Scotty and Davy went off to sleep somewhere,
and didn't get back in time to catch the K.C. pas-
senger at 3.30 A.M. I caught her and rode her till
after sunrise to Masson City, 25,000 inhabitants.
Caught a cattle train and rode all night.

"Tuesday, May 29th. Arrived in Chicago at 7
A.M. . . ."

And years afterward, in China, I had the grief of
learning that the device we employed to navigate
the rapids of the Des Moines — the one-two-one-two,
head-boat-tail-boat proposition — was not originated
by us. I learned that the Chinese river-boatmen had
for thousands of years used a similar device to nego-
tiate "bad water." It is a good stunt all right, even
if we don't get the credit. It answers Dr. Jordan's
test of truth: "Will it work? Will you trust your
life to it?"

BULLS

If the tramp were suddenly to pass away from the
United States, widespread misery for many famihes
would follow. The tramp enables thousands of men
to earn honest livings, educate their children, and
bring them up God-fearing and industrious. I know.
At one time my father was a constable and hunted
tramps for a living. The community paid him so
much per head for all the tramps he could catch, and
also, I believe, he got mileage fees. Ways and means
was always a pressing problem in our household, and
the amount of meat on the table, the new pair of shoes,
the day's outing, or the text-book for school, were
dependent upon my father's luck in the chase. Well
I remember the suppressed eagerness and the suspense
with which I waited to learn each morning what the
results of his past night's toil had been — how many
tramps he had gathered in and what the chances were
for convicting them. And so it was, when later, as
a tramp, I succeeded in eluding some predatory con-
stable, I could not but feel sorry for the little boys

and girls at home in that constable's house; it

196

BULLS 197

seemed to me in a way that I was defrauding those
little boys and girls of some of the good things of
life.

But it's all in the game. The hobo defies society,
and society's watch-dogs make a living out of him.
Some hoboes like to be caught by the watch-dogs —
especially in winter-time. Of course, such hoboes
select communities where the jails are "good," wherein
no work is performed and the food is substantial.
Also, there have been, and most probably still are,
constables who divide their fees with the hoboes they
arrest. Such a constable does not have to hunt.
He whistles, and the game comes right up to his hand.
It is surprising, the money that is made out of stone-
broke tramps. All through the South — at least
when I was hoboing — are convict camps and plan-
tations, where the time of convicted hoboes is bought
by the farmers, and where the hoboes simply have to
work. Then there are places like the quarries at
Rutland, Vermont, where the hobo is exploited, the
unearned energy in his body, which he has accumulated
by "battering on the drag" or "slamming gates,"
being extracted for the benefit of that particular com-
munity.

Now I don't know anything about the quarries at

198 THE ROAD

Rutland, Vermont. I'm very glad that I don't, when
I remember how near I was to getting into them.
Tramps pass the word along, and I first heard of those
quarries when I was in Indiana. But when I got into
New England, I heard of them continually, and always
with danger-signals flying. "They want men in the
quarries," the passing hoboes said; "and they never
give a 'stiff' less than ninety days." By the time I
got into New Hampshire I was pretty well keyed up
over those quarries, and I fought shy of railroad cops,
"bulls," and constables as I never had before.

One evening I went down to the railroad yards at
Concord and found a freight train made up and ready
to start. I located an empty box-car, slid open the
side-door, and climbed in. It was my hope to win
across to White River by morning; that would bring
me into Vermont and not more than a thousand miles
from Rutland. But after that, as I worked north,
the distance between me and the point of danger would
begin to increase. In the car I found a "gay-cat,"
who displayed unusual trepidation at my entrance.
He took me for a "shack" (brakeman), and when he
learned I was only a stiff, he began talking about the
quarries at Rutland as the cause of the fright I
had given him. He was a young country fellow,

BULLS I 99

and had beaten his way only over local stretches of
road.

The freight got under way, and we lay down in one end
of the box-car and went to sleep. Two or three hours
afterward, at a stop, I was awakened by the noise of
the right-hand door being softly slid open. The
gay-cat slept on. I made no movement, though I
veiled my eyes with my lashes to a little slit through
which I could see out. A lantern was thrust in through
the doorway, followed by the head of a shack. He
discovered us, and looked at us for a moment. I
was prepared for a violent expression on his part, or
the customary "Hit the grit, you son of a toad!"
Instead of this he cautiously withdrew the lantern
and very, very softly slid the door to. This struck
me as eminently unusual and suspicious. I listened,
and softly I heard the hasp drop into place. The
door was latched on the outside. We could not open
it from the inside. One way of sudden exit from that
car was blocked. It would never do. I waited a
few seconds, then crept to the left-hand door and tried
it. It was not yet latched. I opened it, dropped to
the ground, and closed it behind me. Then I passed
across the bumpers to the other side of the train. I
opened the door the shack had latched, climbed in,

200 THE ROAD

and closed it behind me. Both exits were available
again. The gay-cat was still asleep.

The train got under way. It came to the next
stop. I heard footsteps in the gravel. Then the
left-hand door was thrown open noisily. The gay-
cat awoke, I made believe to awake; and we sat up
and stared at the shack and his lantern. He didn't
waste any time getting down to business.

"I want three dollars," he said.

We got on our feet and came nearer to him to confer.
We expressed an absolute and devoted willingness
to give him three dollars, but explained our wretched
luck that compelled our desire to remain unsatisfied.
The shack was incredulous. He dickered with us.
He would compromise for two dollars. We regretted
our condition of poverty. He said uncomplimentary
things, called us sons of toads, and damned us from
hell to breakfast. Then he threatened. He explained
that if we didn't dig up, he'd lock us in and carry us
on to White River and turn us over to the authorities.
He also explained all about the quarries at Rutland.

Now that shack thought he had us dead to rights.
Was not he guarding the one door, and had he not him-
self latched the opposite door but a few minutes before ?
When he began talking about quarries, the fright-

BULLS 20 I

ened gay-cat started to sidle across to the other door.
The shack laughed loud and long. "Don't be in a
hurry," he said; "I locked that door on the outside
at the last stop," So imphcitly did he believe the door
to be locked that his words carried conviction. The
gay-cat believed and was in despair.

The shack delivered his ultimatum. Either we
should dig up two dollars, or he would lock us in and
turn us over to the constable at White River — and
that meant ninety days and the quarries. Now,
gentle reader, just suppose that the other door had
been locked. Behold the precariousness of human
life. For lack of a dollar, I'd have gone to the quarries
and served three months as a convict slave. So would
the gay-cat. Count me out, for I was hopeless; but
consider the gay-cat. He might have come out, after
those ninety days, pledged to a life of crime. And
later he might have broken your skull, even your
skull, with a blackjack in an endeavor to take pos-
session of the money on your person — and if not
your skull, then some other poor and unoffending
creature's skull.

But the door was unlocked, and I alone knew it.
The gay-cat and I begged for mercy. I joined in
the pleading and waihng out of sheer cussedness, I

202 THE ROAD

suppose. But I did my best. I told a "story" that
would have melted the heart of any mug ; but it didn't
melt the heart of that sordid money-grasper of a shack.
When he became convinced that we didn't have any
money, he slid the door shut and latched it, then hn-
gered a moment on the chance that we had fooled
him and that we would now offer him the two dollars.

Then it was that I let out a few links. I called
him a son of a toad. I called him all the other things
he had called me. And then I called him a few ad-
ditional things. I came from the West, where men
knew how to swear, and I wasn't going to let any
mangy shack on a measly New England "jerk"
put it over me in vividness and vigor of language.
At first the shack tried to laugh it down. Then he
made the mistake of attempting to reply. I let out
a few more links, and I cut him to the raw and therein
rubbed winged and flaming epithets. Nor was my
fine frenzy all whim and literary; I was indignant
at this vile creature, who, in default of a dollar, would
consign me to three months of slavery. Furthermore,
I had a sneaking idea that he got a "drag" out of
the constable fees.

But I fixed him. I lacerated his feelings and pride
several dollars' worth. He tried to scare me by threat-

BULLS 203

ening to come in after me and kick the stuffing out of
me. In return, I promised to kick him in the face
while he was chmbing in. The advantage of position
was with me, and he saw it. So he kept the door shut
and called for help from the rest of the train-crew.
I could hear them answering and crunching through
the gravel to him. And all the time the other door
was unlatched, and they didn't know it; and in the
meantime the gay-cat was ready to die with fear.

"Oh, I was a hero — with my line of retreat
straight behind me. I slanged the shack and his
mates till they threw the door open and I could see
their infuriated faces in the shine of the lanterns. It
was all very simple to them. They had us cornered
in the car, and they were going to come in and man-
handle us. They started. I didn't kick anybody
in the face. I jerked the opposite door open, and
the gay-cat and I went out. The train-crew took
after us.

We went over — if I remember correctly — a stone
fence. But I have no doubts of recollection about
where we found ourselves. In the darkness I promptly
fell over a grave-stone. The gay-cat sprawled over
another. And then we got the chase of our lives through
that graveyard. The ghosts must have thought we

204 THE ROAD

were going some. So did the train-crew, for when
we emerged from the graveyard and plunged across
a road into a dark wood, the shacks gave up the pur-
suit and went back to their train. A httle later that
night the gay-cat and I found ourselves at the well
of a farmhouse. We were after a drink of water, but
we noticed a small rope that ran down one side of the
well. We hauled it up and found on the end of it a
gallon-can of cream. And that is as near as I got to
the quarries of Rutland, Vermont.

When hoboes pass the word along, concerning a
town, that "the bulls is horstile," avoid that town,
or, if you must, go through softly. There are some
towns that one must always go through softly. Such
a town was Cheyenne, on the Union Pacific. It had
a national reputation for being "horstile," — and it
was all due to the efforts of one Jeff Carr (if I remember
his name aright). Jeff Carr could size up the "front"
of a hobo on the instant. He never entered into dis-
cussion. In the one moment he sized up the hobo,
and in the next he struck out with both fists, a club,
or anything else he had handy. After he had man-
handled the hobo, he started him out of town with a
promise of worse if he ever saw him again. Jeff
Carr knew the game. North, south, east, and west

BULLS 205

to the uttermost confines of the United States (Canada
and Mexico included), the man-handled hoboes carried
the word that Cheyenne was "horstile." Fortunately,
I never encountered Jeff Carr. I passed through
Cheyenne in a blizzard. There were eighty-four
hoboes with me at the time. The strength of numbers
made us pretty nonchalant on most things, but not on
Jeff Carr. The connotation of "Jeff Carr" stunned
our imagination, numbed our virility, and the whole
gang was mortally scared of meeting him.

It rarely pays to stop and enter into explanations
with bulls when they look ' ' horstile. " A swift get-away
is the thing to do. It took me some time to learn
this; but the finishing touch was put upon me by a
bull in New York City. Ever since that time it has
been an automatic process with me to make a run for
it when I see a bull reaching for me. This automatic
process has become a mainspring of conduct in me,
wound up and ready for instant release. I shall
never get over it. Should I be eighty years old, hob-
bling along the street on crutches, and should a police-
man suddenly reach out for me, I know I'd drop the
crutches and run like a deer.

The finishing touch to my education in bulls was
received on a hot summer afternoon in New York

206 THE ROAD

City. It was during a week of scorching weather. I
had got into the habit of throwing my feet in the morn-
ing, and of spending the afternoon in the httle park
that is hard by Newspaper Row and the City Hall.
It was near there that I could buy from push-cart
men current books (that had been injured in the mak-
ing or binding) for a few cents each. Then, right in
the park itself, were little booths where one could buy
glorious, ice-cold, sterilized milk and buttermilk at
a penny a glass. Every afternoon I sat on a bench
and read, and went on a milk debauch. I got away
with from five to ten glasses each afternoon. It was
dreadfully hot weather.

So here I was, a meek and studious milk-drinking
hobo, and behold what I got for it. One afternoon
I arrived at the park, a fresh book-purchase under
my arm and a tremendous buttermilk thirst under
my shirt. In the middle of the street, in front of the
City Hall, I noticed, as I came, along heading for the
buttermilk booth, that a crowd had formed. It was
right where I was crossing the street, so I stopped to
see the cause of the collection of curious men. At
first I could see nothing. Then, from the sounds I
heard and from a glimpse I caught, I knew that it
was a bunch of gamins playing pee-wee. Now pee-

One afternoon I arrived at the park.

BULLS 207

wee is not permitted in the streets of New York. I
didn't know that, but I learned pretty Hvely. I had
paused possibly thirty seconds, in which time I had
learned the cause of the crowd, when I heard a gamin
yell "Bull !" The gamins knew their business. They
ran. I didn't.

The crowd broke up immediately and started for
the sidewalk on both sides of the street. I started
for the sidewalk on the park-side. There must have
been fifty men, who had been in the original crowd,
who were heading in the same direction. We were
loosely strung out. I noticed the bull, a strapping
policeman in a gray suit. He was coming along the
middle of the street, without haste, merely sauntering.
I noticed casually that he changed his course, and
was heading obliquely for the same sidewalk that I
was heading for directly. He sauntered along, thread-
ing the strung-out crowd, and I noticed that his course
and mine would cross each other. I was so innocent
of wrong-doing that, in spite of my education in bulls
and their ways, I apprehended nothing. I never
dreamed that bull was after me. Out of my respect
for the law I was actually all ready to pause the next
moment and let him cross in front of me. The pause
came all right, but it was not of my volition; also it

2o8 THE ROAD

was a backward pause. Without warning, that bull
had suddenly launched out at me on the chest with
both hands. At the same moment, verbally, he cast
the bar sinister on my genealogy.

All my free American blood boiled. All my liberty-
loving ancestors clamored in me. "What do you
mean?" I demanded. You see, I wanted an explana-
tion. And I got it. Bang ! His club came down
on top of my head, and I was reeling backward like
a drunken man, the curious faces of the onlookers
billowing up and down like the waves of the sea, my
precious book falling from under my arm into the
dirt, the bull advancing with the club ready for another
blow. And in that dizzy moment I had a vision. I
saw that club descending many times upon my head ;
I saw myself, bloody and battered and hard-looking,
in a police-court; I heard a charge of disorderly con-
duct, profane language, resisting an officer, and a few
other things, read by a clerk ; and I saw myself across
in Blackwell's Island. Oh, I knew the game. I
lost all interest in explanations. I didn't stop to pick
up my precious, unread book. I turned and ran. I
was pretty sick, but I ran. And run I shall, to my
dying day, whenever a bull begins to explain with a
club.

C

BULLS 209

Why, years after my tramping days, when I was a
student in the University of Cahfornia, one night I
went to the circus. After the show and the concert
I lingered on to watch the working of the transporta-
tion machinery of a great circus. The circus was
leaving that night. By a bonfire I came upon a bunch
of small boys. There were about twenty of them,
and as they talked with one another I learned that
they were going to run away with the circus. Now
the circus-men didn't want to be bothered with this
mess of urchins, and a telephone to police headquar-
ters had "coppered " the play. A squad of ten police-
men had been despatched to the scene to arrest the
small boys for violating the nine o'clock curfew ordi-
nance. The policemen surrounded the bonfire, and
crept up close to it in the darkness. At the signal,
they made a rush, each policeman grabbing at the
youngsters as he would grab into a basket of squirming

eels.

Now I didn't know anything about the coming of
the pohce; and when I saw the sudden eruption of
brass-buttoned, helmeted bulls, each of them reaching
with both hands, all the forces and stability of my being
were overthrown. Remained only the automatic pro-
cess to run. And I ran. I didn't know I was running.

210 THE ROAD

I didn't know anything. It was, as I have said, auto-
matic. There was no reason for me to run. I was
not a hobo. I was a citizen of that community. It
was my home town. I was guilty of no wrong-doing.
I was a college man. I had even got my name in
the papers, and I wore good clothes that had never
been slept in. And yet I ran — blindly, madly, like
a startled deer, for over a block. And when I came
to myself, I noted that I was still running. It required
a positive effort of will to stop those legs of mine.

No, I'll never get over it. I can't help it. When
a bull reaches, I run. Besides, I have an unhappy
faculty for getting into jail. I have been in jail more
times since I was a hobo than when I was one. I
start out on a Sunday morning with a young lady on
a bicycle ride. Before we can get outside the city
limits we are arrested for passing a pedestrian on the
sidewalk. I resolve to be more careful. The next
time I am on a bicycle it is night-time and my acety-
lene-gas-lamp is misbehaving. I cherish the sickly
flame carefully, because of the ordinance. I am in
a hurry, but I ride at a snail's pace so as not to jar out
the flickering flame. I reach the city limits; I am
beyond the jurisdiction of the ordinance; and I pro-
ceed to scorch to make up for lost time. And half a

BULLS 211

mile farther on I am "pinched" by a bull, and the next
morning I forfeit my bail in the police court. The
city had treacherously extended its limits into a mile
of the country, and I didn't know, that was all. I
remember my inalienable right of free speech and
peaceable assemblage, and I get up on a soap-box to
trot out the particular economic bees that buzz in
my bonnet, and a bull takes me off that box and leads
me to the city prison, and after that I get out on bail.
It's no use. In Korea I used to be arrested about
every other day. It was the same thing in Manchuria.
The last time I was in Japan I broke into jail under
the pretext of being a Russian spy. It wasn't my
pretext, but it got me into jail just the same. There
is no hope for me. I am fated to do the Prisoner-
of-Chillon stunt yet. This is prophecy.

I once hypnotized a bull on Boston Common. It
was past midnight and he had me dead to rights; but
before I got done with him he had ponied up a silver
quarter and given me the address of an all-night
restaurant. Then there was a bull in Bristol, New
Jersey, who caught me and let me go, and heaven knows
he had provocation enough to put me in jail. I hit
him the hardest I'll wager he was ever hit in his life.
It happened this way. About midnight I nailed a

212 THE ROAD

freight out of Philadelphia. The shacks ditched me.
She was pulling out slowly through the maze of tracks
and switches of the freight-yards. I nailed her again,
and again I was ditched. You see, I had to nail her
"outside," for she was a through freight with every
door locked and sealed.

The second time I was ditched the shack gave me
a lecture. He told me I was risking my life, that it
was a fast freight and that she went some. I told
him I was used to going some myself, but it was no
go. He said he wouldn't permit me to commit suicide,
and I hit the grit. But I nailed her a third time, get-
ting in between on the bumpers. They were the most
meagre bumpers I had ever seen — I do not refer to
the real bumpers, the iron bumpers that are connected
by the coupling-link and that pound and grind on each
other; what I refer to are the beams, like huge cleats,
that cross the ends of freight cars just above the bump-
ers. When one rides the bumpers, he stands on these
cleats, one foot on each, the bumpers between his feet
and just beneath.

But the beams or cleats I found myself on were
not the broad, generous ones that at that time were
usually on box-cars. On the contrary, they were very
narrow — not more than an inch and a half in breadth.

BULLS 213

I couldn't get half of the width of my sole on them.
Then there was nothing to which to hold with my
hands. True, there were the ends of the two box-
cars; but those ends were flat, perpendicular sur-
faces. There were no grips. I could only press
the flats of my palms against the car-ends for support.
But that would have been all right if the cleats for my
feet had been decently wide.

As the freight got out of Philadelphia she began to
hit up speed. Then I understood what the shack
had meant by suicide. The freight went faster and
faster. She was a through freight, and there was noth-
ing to stop her. On that section of the Pennsylvania
four tracks run side by side, and my east-bound freight
didn't need to worry about passing west-bound freights,
nor about being overtaken by east-bound expresses.
She had the track to herself, and she used it. I was
in a precarious situation. I stood with the mere edges
of my feet on the narrow projections, the palms of my
hands pressing desperately against the flat, perpen-
dicular ends of each car. And those cars moved,
and moved individually, up and down and back and
forth. Did you ever see a circus rider, standing on
two running horses, with one foot on the back of each
horse? Well, that was what I was doing, with several

214 THE ROAD

differences. The circus rider had the reins to hold
on to, while I had nothing ; he stood on the broad soles
of his feet, while I stood on the edges of mine ; he bent
his legs and body, gaining the strength of the arch in
his posture and achieving the stability of a low centre
of gravity, while I was compelled to stand upright
and keep my legs straight; he rode face forward,
while I was riding sidewise; and also, if he fell off,
he'd get only a roll in the sawdust, while I'd have
been' ground to pieces beneath the wheels.

And that freight was certainly going some, roaring
and shrieking, swinging madly around curves, thunder-
ing over trestles, one car-end bumping up when the
other was jarring down, or jerking to the right at the
same moment the other was lurching to the left, and
with me all the while praying and hoping for the train
to stop. But she didn't stop. She didn't have to.
For the first, last, and only time on The Road, I got
all I wanted. I abandoned the bumpers and managed
to get out on a side-ladder; it was ticklish work, for
I had never encountered car-ends that were so par-
simonious of hand-holds and foot-holds as those car-
ends were.

I heard the engine whistling, and I felt the speed
easing down. I knew the train wasn't going to stop,

BULLS 215

but my mind was made up to chance it if she slowed
down sufficiently. The right of way at this point took
a curve, crossed a bridge over a canal, and cut through
the town of Bristol. This combination compelled
slow speed. I clung on to the side-ladder and waited.
I didn't know it was the town of Bristol we were ap-
proaching. I did not know what necessitated slacken-
ing in speed. All I knew was that I wanted to get
off. I strained my eyes in the darkness for a street-
crossing on which to land. I was pretty well down
the train, and before my car was in the town the engine
was past the station and I could feel her making speed
again.

Then came the street. It was too dark to see how
wide it was or what was on the other side. I knew
I needed all of that street if I was to remain on my
feet after I struck. I dropped off on the near side.
It sounds easy. By "dropped off" I mean just this:
I first of all, on the side-ladder, thrust my body for-
ward as far as I could in the direction the train was
going — this to give as much space as possible in which
to gain backward momentum when I swung off. Then
I swung, swung out and backward, backward with
all my might, and let go — at the same time throwing
myself backward as if I intended to strike the ground

2l6 THE ROAD

on the back of my head. The whole effort was to
overcome as much as possible the primary forward
momentum the train had imparted to my body. When
my feet hit the grit, my body was lying backward on
the air at an angle of forty-five degrees. I had reduced
the forward momentum some, for when my feet struck,
I did not immediately pitch forward on my face. In-
stead, my body rose to the perpendicular and began
to incline forward. In point of fact, my body proper
still retained much momentum, while my feet, through
contact with the earth, had lost all their momentum.
This momentum the feet had lost I had to supply
anew by lifting them as rapidly as I could and running
them forward in order to keep them under my forward-
moving body. The result was that my feet beat a rapid
and explosive tattoo clear across the street. I didn't
dare stop them. If I had, I'd have pitched forward.
It was up to me to keep on going.

I was an involuntary projectile, worrying about what
was on the other side of the street and hoping that
it wouldn't be a stone wall or a telegraph pole. And
just then I hit something. Horrors ! I saw it just
the instant before the disaster — of all things, a bull,
standing there in the darkness. We went down to-
gether, rolling over and over; and the automatic

BULLS 217

process was such in that miserable creature that in
the moment of impact he reached out and clutched
me and never let go. We were both knocked out,
and he held on to a very lamb-like hobo while he
recovered.

If that bull had any imagination, he must have thought

me a traveller from other worlds, the man from Mars

just arriving ; for in the darkness he hadn't seen me

swing from the train. In fact, his first words were:

"Where did you come from?" His next words, and

before I had time to answer, were: "I've a good mind

to run you in." This latter, I am convinced, was

likewise automatic. He was a really good bull at heart,

for after I had told him a "story" and helped brush

off his clothes, he gave me until the next freight

to get out of town. I stipulated two things:

first, that the freight be east-bound, and second, that

it should not be a through freight with all doors

sealed and locked. To this he agreed, and thus,

by the terms of the Treaty of Bristol, I escaped being

pinched.

I remember another night, in that part of the coun-
try, when I just missed another bull. If I had hit
him, I'd have telescoped him, for I was coming down
from above, all holds free, with several other bulls

2l8 THE ROAD

one jump behind and reaching for me. This is how
it happened. I had been lodging in a hvery stable
in Washington. I had a box-stall and unnumbered
horse-blankets all to myself. In return for such
sumptuous accommodation I took care of a string
of horses each morning. I might have been there
yet, if it hadn't been for the bulls.

One evening, about nine o'clock, I returned to the
stable to go to bed, and found a crap game in full
blast. It had been a market day, and all the negroes
had money. It would be well to explain the lay of
the land. The livery stable faced on two streets.
I entered the front, passed through the office, and
came to the alley between two rows of stalls that ran
the length of the building and opened out on the
other street. Midway along this alley, beneath a
gas-jet and between the rows of horses, were about
forty negroes. I joined them as an onlooker. I
was broke and couldn't play. A coon was making
passes and not dragging down. He was riding his luck,
and with each pass the total stake doubled. All
kinds of money lay on the floor. It was fascinating.
With each pass, the chances increased tremendously
against the coon making another pass. The excite-
ment was intense. And just then there came a thun-

I went down to the depot and caught the first blind out.

stq 5[oo; I pu^ 'ara p ;uojj ui :>snf o;;^pm u^aj v s-bm
aiaqX i "'^^ I ^oq uaq; puy 'aa^J sb^ P^'B 'sSa^
sjpq B u33Avj3q paAip 'qnp "b uiojj ;bms ■b p3:5[onp 'aui
pa^oAid p'Bq o^A^ uooo ua^'Bj aqi J3Ao pa^quin^s i
•sqnp jpq; SuiSuims 913JA Xaq; os pu-B 'spu^q jpqi
q;iAi qsnj aq; do;s ;,uppoD Xaq; m3u:5[ Xaqx 'sn JOj
apis;no Suprevw. s^m sqnq jo pBnbs jaq^ouy "-laa^s
-B aqq UMop ;u3Ai aq puB p^aq aq; uo uiiq paj^^MS
qnp ■B ju'b;sui jxau aqx isjq qSnojq; ;oS pa's ara
pa;oAid aq pu-B 'j u'Bq; aaSSiq s-bm ajj "auip aui^s
aq; ^-b joop aqi ^'B qs'Ep "B ap^ui jpsifui pu-B uooo Siq y
•siauosiid Suqreu aiaAi sqnq aqj 'j'Baj ano ^y -suood
jaq;o Xq paMoqoj puE uiiq qjiM. Suo^-b qs'BS aqi SuiqB;
'MopuiAi aq; qSnojq; aAip b qoo} uooa y -pa^saSuoa
aui^aaq sSuiqx 'arai; auiBS aq; ^-e paj;s aq; o; ;no
ss-Bd o; sn jo we ;Tuuad ;ou ppoAv aoop Ai.oii'Bu aq;
pu-B 'aaqjo aq; ui i^j'Bp s-BAi ;i ■A'bm. jaq;o aq; paSins
^AV 'Sipci JO p'Bnbs ■B paSjns raaq; qSnoiq; puB 'ui
SunMS pu-B uado paqsBJD sjoop aqx "Suiqq^iS S'BM una
;(Up'Bq oqM. u-Btu XiaAg •uio;sn3 Xpjaui S'EAv ;i : ;jaq;
;(US'BM siqx 'Joog aq; uo Xauoui jo spui:s[ wv aq;
;-B q'BjS o; ;uauioui ■b ;qSig Xui uiojj pasn'Bd j -uoi;
-oaiip a;isoddo aq; ui pa;|oq saoaSau aq; jo Avaj y

•;aai;s :5[0Bq
aq; uo pauado ;'Bq; sioop Sjq aq; uo qs'BUis Suuap

6iz snna

220 THE ROAD

pace. He knew the town better than I did, and I
knew that in the way he ran lay safety. But he, on
the other hand, took me for a pursuing bull. He
never looked around. He just ran. My wind was
good, and I hung on to his pace and nearly killed him.
In the end he stumbled weakly, went down on his
knees, and surrendered to me. And when he dis-
covered I wasn't a bull, all that saved me was that
he didn't have any wind left in him.

That was why I left Washington — not on account
of the mulatto, but on account of the bulls. I went
down to the depot and caught the first blind out on
a Pennsylvania Railroad express. After the train
got good and under way and I noted the speed she
was making, a misgiving smote me. This was a
four-track railroad, and the engines took water on
the fly. Hoboes had long since warned me never to
ride the first blind on trains where the engines took
water on the fly. And now let me explain. Between
the tracks are shallow metal troughs. As the engine,
at full speed, passes above, a sort of chute drops down
into the trough. The result is that all the water in
the trough rushes up the chute and fills the tender.

Somewhere along between Washington and Balti-
more, as I sat on the platform of the blind, a fine spray

BULLS 221

began to fill the air. It did no harm. Ah, ha, thought
I; it's all a bluff, this taking water on the fly being
bad for the bo on the first blind. What does this
little spray amount to ? Then I began to marvel at
the device. This was railroading ! Talk about your
primitive Western railroading — and just then the
tender filled up, and it hadn't reached the end of the
trough. A tidal wave of water poured over the back
of the tender and down upon me. I was soaked to
the skin, as wet as if I had fallen overboard.

The train pulled into Baltimore. As is the cus-
tom in the great Eastern cities, the railroad ran be-
neath the level of the streets on the bottom of a big
"cut." As the train pulled into the lighted depot,
I made myself as small as possible on the blind. But
a railroad bull saw me, and gave chase. Two more
joined him. I was past the depot, and I ran straight
on down the track. I was in a sort of trap. On each
side of me rose the steep walls of the cut, and if I
ever essayed them and failed, I knew that I'd slide
back into the clutches of the bulls. I ran on and
on, studying the walls of the cut for a favorable place
to climb up. At last I saw such a place. It came
just after I had passed under a bridge that carried
a level street across the cut. Up the steep slope I

222 THE ROAD

went, clawing hand and foot. The three railroad
bulls were clawing up right after me.

At the top, I found myself in a vacant lot. On
one side was a low wall that separated it from the
street. There was no time for minute investiga-
tion. They were at my heels. I headed for the wall
and vaulted it. And right there was where I got the
surprise of my life. One is used to thinking that one
side of a wall is just as high as the other side. But
that wall was different. You see, the vacant lot was
much higher than the level of the street. On my
side the wall was low, but on the other side —
well, as I came soaring over the top, all holds free, it
seemed to me that I was falling feet-first, plump into
an abyss. There beneath me, on the sidewalk, under
the light of a street-lamp was a bull. I guess it was
nine or ten feet down to the sidewalk ; but in the shock
of surprise in mid-air it seemed twice that distance.

I straightened out in the air and came down. At
first I thought I was going to land on the bull. My
clothes did brush him as my feet struck the sidewalk
with explosive impact. It was a wonder he didn't
drop dead, for he hadn't heard me' coming. It was
the man-from-Mars stunt over again. The bull did
jump. He shied away from me like a horse from an

BULLS 223

auto; and then he reached for me. I didn't stop to
explain. I left that to my pursuers, who were drop-
ping over the wall rather gingerly. But I got a chase
all right. I ran up one street and down another,
dodged around corners, and at last got away.

After spending some of the coin I'd got from the
crap game and killing off an hour of time, I came
back to the railroad cut, just outside the lights of
the depot, and waited for a train. My blood had
cooled down, and I shivered miserably, what of my
wet clothes. At last a train pulled into the station.
I lay low in the darkness, and successfully boarded
her when she pulled out, taking good care this time
to make the second blind. No more water on the
fly in mine. The train ran forty miles to the first stop.
I got off in a lighted depot that was strangely familiar.
I was back in Washington. In some way, during
the excitement of the get-away in Baltimore, running
through strange streets, dodging and turning and
retracing, I had got turned around. I had taken
the train out the wrong way. I had lost a night's
sleep, I had been soaked to the skin, I had been chased
for my life; and for all my pains I was back where
I had started. Oh, no, life on The Road is not all
beer and skitdes. But I didn't go back to the livery

224 THE ROAD

Stable. I had done some pretty successful grabbing,
and I didn't want to reckon up with the coons. So
I caught the next train out, and ate my breakfast in
Baltimore.

Jack London's Social Studies
The People of the Abyss

" It is not a complete picture of East London, not a compre-
hensive picture . . . but it is indeed the London seen by thou-
sands of men and women living on the verge of starvation. It is
the picture London presents to rags and an empty stomach every
hour of the day, and as such it is worth the serious attention of
mankind." — New York Times' Saturday Review.

" The reverse side of our boasted civilization has perhaps never
been shown with more direct power and grip upon the imagina-
tion." — The Congregationalist, Boston.

" Life in the abyss has been pictured many times before, compla-
cently and soothingly by Prof. Walter A. WyckoiT, luridly by
Mr. Stead, scientifically by Mr. Charles Booth. But Mr. London
alone has made it real and present to us." — Independent.

Illustrated from photographs by the author $1.50 net

War of the Classes

" The statements of this book are as bare and bold as the story of
' The Sea-Wolf,' and present the socialists' and laborers' side of the
economic situation with vigor, clearness, and impressiveness."

— The Watchman.

i2mo Paper, 25 cents net Cloth, $1.50 net

The Kempton-Wace Letters

" I am much impressed by the book ... it is an entertaining,
thought-compelling work. I should not be surprised if it became
a classic on the subject of lo-it:' — Edwin Markham.

By JACK LONDON and ANNA STRUNSKY

Cloth 12110 *'-5°

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

PTJBIISHEES, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW TOEK

Jack London's Short Stories

The Faith of Men and Other Stories

" Mr. London's art as a story-teller nowhere manifests itself more
strongly than in the swift dramatic close of his stories. There is no
hesitancy or uncertainty of touch. From the start the story moves
straight to the inevitable conclusion," — Courier-Journal.

The Children of the Frost

Illustrated by Raphael M. Reay

"Jack I^ondon is at his best in the short story. . , . His are clear-
cut, sharp, incisive, with the tang of the frost in them."

— Ricord-Herald, Chicago.

Moon-Face and Other Stories

" Mr. London's short stories . . . are typical, graphic, tense, pow-
erful, gripping the reader with a power that knows no breaking till
the story ends." — Chicago Evening Post.

Tales of the Fish Patrol Illustrated

" Aside from the keen interest of the tales as bits of real adventure
on the side of law and order, they have the charm of genuine nov-
elty for the average boy reader. They are a part of the author's
own experience on the San Francisco Bay patrol, rounding up
Greek, Italian, and Chinese poachers."

— New Yori Times' Saturday Review.

Love of Life

Each in Cloth 12mo $1.50

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

PUBLISHEES, 64^-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YOEK